Frost Keeps Out the Cold
by Violet CLM
Summary: After watching him with the garden fairy Rosetta, Gliss decides she's jealous of Sled and wants a girlfriend of her own. This plan makes Spike very uncomfortable, but she's not quite sure why...
1. Chapter 1

"This is a terrible idea."

"Shhh! They'll hear you!"

"That's exactly why this is such a terrible idea."

Gliss was slim, with a face like a rounded triangle and eyes as soft as any snow bunny, and she had hero hair. There was no way of getting around it; her hair made her look like she should have been a hero. And maybe she still would, since she was endlessly enthusiastic and cheerful to a fault—even early in the morning when no decent soul should have been awake—but she was too impulsive to live a life of adventure. It wasn't that she had a short attention span; she just had far too many of them. Once you got Gliss hooked on an idea, there was no shaking her from it, no matter how many other ideas she was still working on, and her latest idea seemed to involve rather a good deal of spying.

"But look how cute they are! She's even wearing pink, the color of true love!"

"Gliss, she's a garden fairy. They all wear pink."

"I know, I know, it's so perfect!"

Also she was a fairy. She was winged and graceful and small enough to fit into your hand, except that part didn't make any sense, because surely you were a fairy too. Everyone Gliss knew was a fairy. In particular she was a frost fairy, inarguably one of the best in the Winter Woods, but just recently her nice predictable life had been invaded by a gang of warm fairies from the other side of the crossing. Their friend Periwinkle had found a sister, and their friend Sled had found, well…

"Look look look look! Sled's giving her a flower! Oh, I bet she'll like it too."

"Of course she will. She's a garden fairy. Flowers are what they do."

"Oh gosh, you're right! I hadn't thought of that. Do you think other fairies would like flowers too?"

"I don't know. Would you like it if someone gave you a flower?"

"Totally!"

"Of course you would."

Gliss was reluctantly accompanied by her friend Spike. Spike shared Gliss's build and basic facial structure, but everything else about them was as different as if someone had designed them that way on purpose. And someone had. Years ago someone had managed to confuse the two of them, and Spike had been so offended that she'd taken it on herself to differentiate herself from Gliss as far as any fairy possibly could. She dyed her hair black and wore it straight and flat around the sides of her head. She pieced together a ladylike light blue dress that hugged her hips and decorated it with a dark feather—not because she considered herself particularly ladylike, but because Gliss liked to wear a sort of crossed halter top and smooth middle-length pants, both dark blue and undeniably aerodynamic, and Spike had shied away from that style as much as she could. She even tried to spread her wings out more and spend more time walking instead of flying.

None of this had hurt Gliss's feelings in the least, fortunately; Spike had never once seen anyone actually hurt her feelings, and she was reluctant to try, unsure whether Gliss would remain cheerful and exuberant in the face of all trials or else collapse instantly into a puddle of uncontrollable misery. So for years she held back her cruelest remarks and sharpest jibes and allowed Gliss to lead her through life on one fool's errand after another, questing for objects that didn't exist or testing new sports too dangerous for common practice, up to and including dragging herself out of bed to spy on Sled while he courted a garden fairy with customary slow-speaking charm. It was a ridiculous way to live.

That said, she'd never had quite so much fun before and wouldn't have traded their friendship for all the berries in Frost Forest.

"They're holding hands, Spike! Holding. Hands. Oh I do think they like each other, I really do. Oh wow, he just caught a snowflake that was going to land on her and now they're looking at it together! Are you seeing all this?!"

"Um, no? They're obviously trying to have a private moment, and you're not helping."

"Spike, I am so totally helping! If I wasn't so helpful I'd be barging over there and fussing over them, and then they wouldn't have any privacy at all."

"But…"

"Oh gosh! Spike, they're looking into each other's eyes now! I don't think I'll be able to take it if they kiss. I shall faint and fall right out of this tree. Spike, you have to promise me that you'll catch me if they kiss."

Spike looked, making sure she was wearing her very most reluctant expression. Sled and the garden fairy—Rosetta, that was her name—were indeed staring at each other, the snowflake still held in their hands but clearly forgotten. Sled, from what she could tell from their vantage point in the tree, looked as confident as ever, and the garden fairy's knees were wobbling, but they were definitely getting closer to each other, and Spike smiled despite herself. They did make a cute couple, even if the garden fairy could stand to learn a thing or two about girl power and all that. Why, if she were in a relationship she would need to see her partner as her equal, none of that weak-kneed `oh ma gosh y'all ah might just faint' nonsense.

Not, thought Spike smugly, that she was planning on getting involved in a relationship to begin with. In the first place, she definitely didn't have the time. Maybe winter was only three months out of the year, but practicing took up a big chunk of the rest of her time! Taking things that didn't have any frost and putting frost on them was complicated, and she was an artist! And kind of lazy. But mostly an artist!

Besides, where would she even find someone? She'd missed the boat on Sled, by the looks of it, and none of the other sparrow men in the Winter Woods much interested her. A lot of them were too brooding, and brooding she already had down to an art form. And smirking, she was good at smirking. But that just left the boys from the warm side of Pixie Hollow, and not many of them had suited up in coats and leggings and made their way across yet, even though that was exactly the sort of proof of love and dedication she'd need to see. If some poor fellow was so besotted with her that he wrapped up his wings and braved a trip into unfamiliar territory just to come see her, like that garden fairy was doing for Sled, then Spike would definitely consider giving him a chance. Maybe. If she wasn't too busy and all.

A small, nasty voice in the back of her head took this moment to chime in. Why would such a sparrow man ever appear? In the first place, it reminded her, she had hardly made herself known to enough fairies that anyone would even know she was there to be looked for. In the second place, she was lazy, smug, sarcastic, disagreeable, and all-around unpleasant company. She'd heard how people faltered when introducing her, 'oh, and this is Spike… she's a bit, um…' and so on. Nobody loved her. Nobody would ever love her.

Shut up, Spike thought to herself, shut up shut up! She was excellent company! She smiled a lot, for one thing, even if that was because she was smiling at her friends' misfortunes. And she was always hanging out with her friends, even if sometimes she had to chase after them so they wouldn't leave her behind, and, uh… she did have that pretty feather in her bodice! She got definite points for style. She was, after all, an artist, even if there was no use for her medium nine months out of the year, and almost everything she made would just melt the very next day…

"Gliss?" Her voice was smaller than she was used to hearing it. "Um, do you think I'm—"

"Aaaaaaahhh!"

Spike's head shot up to take in the scene around her. Sled and Rosetta's lips had met over the snowflake, and there was a Gliss-shaped bit of air next to her that was decidedly not occupied by Gliss anymore. Instead her friend was falling to the earth below them, eyes closed and mouth wide in purest happiness, and there was a rock far beneath her that looked extremely painful. "Jingles," muttered Spike, and leapt into a high-speed dive.

She caught up to Gliss with half a second to spare and swept her out of the way of the rock, stumbling in midair from the added weight. Gliss burned through body fat faster than any fairy Spike knew, but she was still carrying someone her own size with little warning, and a moment later they were both sprawled unceremoniously into the snow with thankfully zero injuries. Spike glared at Gliss only to discover she was somehow still unconscious. At least she'd announced her plans to faint in advance—Spike wasn't at all sure she'd have been quick enough to catch her otherwise, and she shivered at the thought.

"Spike? Gliss?" Spike groaned and looked up to find Sled and the garden fairy hovering above her. Their faces were tinted red, but they looked worried, and Spike inwardly chastised herself for disturbing them right after accusing Gliss for much the same thing. If a fairy or sparrow man wanted a private moment to themselves, they really should be able to get it without worrying about random friends fainting out of trees all around them…!

"Hi guys," she said, and grabbed Gliss around her upper arms. Gliss still refused to wake. "Don't mind us! Uh, just passing through, no need to stop whatever you were doing…"

Sled floated forwards and helped her to get a better hold on Gliss, carrying her in her arms like an oversized baby, which come to think of it was a pretty good description of her. "Is Gliss all right?" he asked.

"Oh, she's fine. Just, uh, had a little too much to drink, that's all!"

"Like a clumsy?" The garden fairy had her hands on her hips and was giving Spike the kind of skeptical look she felt completely unprepared to satisfy. "Honey, we're fairies. We don't drink!"

"Well, there you go!" Spike grinned hopefully, reasoning that the more attention they paid to how unconscious Gliss was, the less they'd think to wonder why she and Spike were even there in the first place. "No wonder she fell asleep then. No tolerance! I'll just see you guys later…" And she was off, wings beating frantically to get her away from Sled as fast as she could go with Gliss sagging in her arms, and didn't dare look behind her until she'd gotten all the way to Gliss's house.


	2. Chapter 2

The concept of houses was one that most ice fairies were still—she allowed herself the pun—warming to. As far as Spike knew they'd always lived together in hollows in trees and burrows under hills and the like, trusting the animals with their winter coats to devise better places to spend the night than they could, but then the warm fairies had shown up and wondered where all the houses were. Some warm fairies apparently lived on their own in individual beds in individual houses despite hardly needing the shelter at all, which gave them the chance to personalize their living spaces, and that idea Gliss had fallen in love with instantly.

The product of several weeks' hard work by Gliss and her most trusted friends and anyone else who felt like pitching in, Gliss's house looked like nothing less than a giant acorn on stilts. The stilts had been Periwinkle's sister's idea, so the house wouldn't get buried whenever the snow fell a little too heavily, and the acorn design had naturally been Gliss's. Her real acorn sat proudly in the very center of the building's round main room, with all the other rooms, including Gliss's bedroom, built as regularly spaced offshoots of the center chamber like petals on a flower.

Worn out, Spike laid Gliss carefully down in her cotton bed and pulled a leaf across her. Gliss's face was still frozen in its blissful smile, and Spike teetered between frustration and amusement at the sight. She'd been nothing but dead weight the whole trip there, and she insisted on looking so ice-meltingly happy just because she'd seen Sled getting especially romantic with his garden fairy sweetheart. Spike had flown Gliss all the way home; where were her thanks? Still, she leaned over and gave Gliss a quick kiss on the forehead like she'd seen animal fairies do, to help her sleep.

"Mmmmph… Spike?"

Spike stiffened and leapt back from the bed, face oddly warm. She tripped over a hairbrush made with the help of a friendly porcupine and crashed noisily to the floor.

"Spike?" Gliss peaked at her from over her leaf. "What are you doing here?"

Spike glared at her, angry that she'd fallen and angry Gliss had seen it happen. "Oh, now her majesty's awake! I told you it was a bad idea, but you just had to go and faint right out of the tree and I had to carry you all the way here."

Gliss sat up stretched her arms behind her head, her wings twitching cutely and her ridiculous hairstyle in perfect condition. "Mmmm! You call all my ideas bad, Spikey, I've kinda stopped listening. What happened? Oh wait, oh gosh, Sled!"

"Give the fairy a prize."

"Would you!? No, you're joking, I can tell from your frown. Did you really carry me? That's so sweet! Want some tea?"

Spike did her best to continue glaring, resorting to feeling angry with Gliss for doing so little to be angry at. "I should be out practicing."

"Tea… with extra sugar?!"

"Fine."

The trouble with Gliss—one of the troubles—was how unfairly good she had to be at everything. She was almost as good a frost fairy as Spike and definitely better than Periwinkle, and she was forever ready to encourage anybody and everybody, and she was always Sled's second-in-command in snowball fights. When there was something she wasn't good at, like acorn-house-building, she was so cheerful and unjudging that fairies were happy to pitch in and help her out. But most importantly, even though Spike didn't understand how it was something you could be good at, Gliss was absolutely the best at making tea.

Her honey lemon blend, originating with only the finest and most confused bees who wandered into Winter, was mostly designed for dealing with illness, but Gliss chirpily proclaimed that she'd fainted and that was close enough to feeling sick to break out the tea. Spike tried to point out that she'd fainted from happiness, but Gliss managed not to hear her, and soon enough they were sitting at Gliss's table and Gliss's smile was as sweet as the extra sugar she made sure to give Spike before they started drinking. Her table was one of Periwinkle's Found Things, a flat red circle with a sharp spear on its underside that had been stuck fast into Gliss's floor so as to stay put; it didn't quite match the rest of her house, but Spike thought it was nice and practical.

"So," said Gliss, and blew on her tea, "I've been thinking."

"Oh, so now you try that."

Gliss giggled. "No, I mean about Sled! And how you said I should get a prize. Well, maybe I should! I've decided I'm going to be jealous."

Spike tried to picture it. Jealousy was a decidedly negative emotion, and Gliss tended to stay away from those like snowmen from a fire. The whole prospect sounded decidedly unlikely. Still, she asked "Jealous?" and sipped from her delicious tea.

"Right! I bet I'd be a natural at giving other fairies flowers, and holding hands sounds easy, and I've always thought my face looks extremely kissable. Why should Sled get to do all that and I don't? So I've decided to get my own girlfriend!"

Spike choked and sprayed her mouthful of tea all over Gliss's clean table. She took a moment to wipe her mouth with the back of one hand and stare at her friend, for once too bewildered to think of anything to make fun of her for. "You're jealous… of Sled?"

"Yep! Oh, he's nice and all, but I think I can pull it off. Maybe I'll defect and throw snowballs at him for a change and see what he thinks."

"But… what about Rosetta?"

"Who?"

"Sled's garden fairy!"

"Oh, her." Gliss shrugged and took a hearty drink from her cup. "No, it looks like she's spoken for… I'll need to find someone else. I wonder if the Keeper has any books about dating! Or if he has any owls who could read them to me, so I don't have to sit around staring at pages all day. Have I told you about my Audiowl Book plan? I'm sure it'll catch on in no time, if I can just find an animal-talent to help me out!"

That last bit was only an example of ordinary-level Gliss foolishness, and Spike ignored it easily. But the rest sounded like it was rapidly turning into one of Gliss's capital-I Ideas, the ones that took over her life—and Spike's, while she helped—until she brought them to completion, and Spike wasn't sure if there was still time to stop her before she did something really stupid. Not that Gliss was stupid, but she was so horribly impetuous, and it was always up to Spike to keep her grounded…

"No," she said, setting her tea down for emphasis, "I mean, shouldn't you be jealous of Rosetta instead? She's the one dating Sled."

"I know I know isn't it so exciting!" Gliss's wings shot out from her back and fluttered violently as her eyes sparkled, and Spike groaned. The subtle approach wasn't working at all.

"Gliss, look. Sled's a sparrow man, and Rosetta's a fairy girl, like you. You mean you want a boyfriend, not a girlfriend."

"Ohhhhh." Gliss looked thoughtful for a moment, then frowned at her. "I get you! But no thanks. Boys don't talk enough and they're not as cute. Do you not like your tea? I could get you some more sugar!"

"No, it's great, thank you!" Spike grabbed her cup again and drank from it frantically. It really was great, especially with the sugar, but there must have been something odd about it because Gliss's living room was suddenly feeling much smaller than usual and there was a sort of hollow ringing in her ears and a pounding in her heart. She even briefly suspected Gliss of poisoning her but threw that idea out as laughable. "You like… girls?"

"I like a lot of things!" Spike managed not to insert any scathing comment on this, and Gliss kept going without seeming to notice her friend's struggle. "Tea, frost, acorns… why not girls too? Or just one girl, anyway, but I guess I need to figure out which one."

"Oh, acorns," said Spike, slipping back into sarcasm with a lowering brow. "I'm glad you've put just as much thought into your romantic prospects as into your favorite squirrel food!"

"Lots more, actually! I know plenty of girls, but I'd never seen acorns before and I knew I liked them anyway." Gliss smiled at her with such guilelessness Spike could barely believe her sincerity. "You're feeling awfully grouchy today, Spike! Maybe you should get a girlfriend too, and she can make you happy."

Spike almost choked again. "I'm not a sparrow man, Gliss! Girls can't be with girls!"

Gliss tilted her head. "They can't?"

"Of course not!"

"Why not?"

"Because…" Spike's tongue, her most trusted weapon, abruptly failed her, and she stared helplessly into Gliss's endlessly trusting face. It wasn't like her friend was testing her or anything; Spike had made a statement, far more directly than she was accustomed to, and Gliss had asked how she knew she was right, and Spike… didn't know. She'd talked to enough animal-talent pixies to know that such things mattered a lot for animals, but then fairies were born from babies' laughs, and anything else involved was stuff she was too embarrassed to ask about.

"Because…" Because it felt incredibly important. Because she believed that it wasn't allowed. But she didn't know why, and she didn't know what would happen if she was wrong, only that she was suddenly not confused, not angry, not stern, just… scared. She was scared that Gliss was going to do something she couldn't take back, and Spike was going to have to do something too, and whatever it was wouldn't be easy. She was scared that something was going to change.

"Because…" Every time she repeated it a little more faintly. How could she explain any of that to Gliss? And even if she could, what would Gliss do but remind her about Periwinkle's sister and all the other warm fairies? That had been a change, and she'd been scared then too, even if she'd hidden it under her usual arsenal of superiority and sarcasm, but she could hardly argue it had been a change for the worse. Periwinkle had gone her whole life with an indistinct aura of sadness, and then she'd met her sister and it was gone! Could… could that somehow happen again?

"Because nobody does it?" she finally asked, fully aware how pathetic it sounded.

Gliss blinked at her. "There are a whole lot of pixies in Pixie Hollow, Spike! It must have happened sometime! But if you're really worried, we can ask the Keeper about it."

Spike drained the last of her tea in silence. "Really?"

"Sure!" Gliss stood up and spun around in place, ending what had been for her an unusually long period of inactivity. "You're my best friend! You're worked about this for some reason, so we might as well talk to the Keeper and he can calm you down, okay?"

Spike's heart felt twice its usual weight, but she kept talking because it was easiest. "Sure, because obviously he'll side with you over me. What if he says no?"

Gliss shrugged and launched herself through her open front door. "I dunno! I don't think that far ahead!"


	3. Chapter 3

The way to the Keeper's library wasn't especially long, but Gliss got distracted by Qana the snowflake fairy searching for an opponent for a quick game of ice polo, and Spike waved them off to play while she sat and watched and thought. Normally Spike enjoyed thinking, since it gave her an edge over certain of her friends and she prided herself on her snappy and snappish comebacks. Lately, though, by which she supposed she meant the last hour or so, her thoughts had been rather less helpful than usual.

Spike was an intelligent fairy, and the similarities of her situation to Periwinkle's were clear to her. Not so long ago they'd had a rule in place forbidding contact with the warm fairies, which had been repealed because… well, she wasn't completely clear on his reasoning, but Lord Milori had most probably realized that fairies would only break the rule if it were allowed to continue, and there'd be fewer injuries if crossing over was allowed but merely regulated. And surely she was the Lord Milori in this situation, and Gliss the Periwinkle, except she didn't even have any proof such a rule actually existed?

The rationale for Lord Milori's rule had been as clear to her as it notably hadn't been to Gliss. Some fairies were built to live in warmer climes and others in colder ones, and too much exposure to the wrong conditions could be painful or even fatal. Okay. So if she was going to continue this analogy, what was the rationale for her rule? If Gliss wanted to kiss—no, that was too personal. If Sled wanted to kiss Slush, what could go wrong? It might even be sort of hot… ack ack ack, no, bad thought!

She racked her brain in increasing desperation for anything she knew about differences between the sexes. Sparrow men were… bigger, she guessed? They had deeper voices? Really the whole system was probably kind of pointless. Maybe there could be issues with fairies only hanging out with other fairies, or sparrow men only with other sparrow men, but she spent most of her time with Gliss anyway, and it wasn't like they didn't have ice cream socials for that sort of thing. So if there didn't seem to be any way that Gliss could hurt herself by liking girls, or hurt anyone else either, what was making Spike feel so awful? It didn't seem to be logical or principled, it was just an instinctual reaction, and the worst was that if she presented it to Gliss that way then Gliss might even listen to her, but she'd feel so intellectually dishonest…

"Game point!" cried Qana, uncharacteristically excited. "I win!"

"Nice one!" Gliss high-fived her while Spike stretched and got ready to leave. "Thanks for the game."

"Likewise. Fly with you later!"

"And you! …oh, wait a minute. Qana?"

"Yes?" Qana was flying away by then, but turned around in midair to face them.

Gliss clasped her hands in front of her chest and smiled, the perfect image of innocent enthusiasm. "Do you want to go on a date with me?!"

Spike watched Qana with frightened interest as the quiet snowflake fairy's face went through several different contortions of confusion. Eventually she settled for looking timid yet pleased, but before she could say anything, the consequences for literally flying backwards caught up with her and she smashed into a glacier.

"Eep!" Gliss took off instantly to inspect Qana's fallen body, and Spike was moments behind her. She grabbed Qana's wrist while Gliss put a careful hand on her forehead, and they both waited expectantly for several moments before deciding she still had a normal temperature and pulse. She hadn't been flying all that quickly, and Spike figured she'd probably been knocked out more by the surprise of Gliss's question than anything else, though she didn't want to say that out loud.

"She should be fine," Spike said. "Come on, we were still going to the Keeper's."

Gliss looked distraught to the point that her hair actually settled downward on her head a little. "But I never got an answer to my question!"

"Did you really like her? More than anyone else?"

"Oh, not particularly. But she's pretty, right? And she was nearby!"

Spike looked at her friend flatly. "Then you can always ask her later, if you haven't given away your heart to anyone else in the meantime. Let's go find out if you're even allowed to in the first place." Internally she felt she knew the answer to the question, for such a rule felt less likely every time she thought about it, but she was still interested to know what the Keeper would say. She had to respect a man who wrote books.

"Fiiiiine." Gliss somersaulted into the air and sped off for the library, leaving Spike to rush after her a moment later. By the time she caught up Gliss was looking bizarrely thoughtful, and Spike braced herelf for questions.

"You're getting less worried-sounding, Spikey!" she said a few seconds later. "Before you didn't think I could like girls at all, and now you're just worried about Qana."

"Maybe I just don't want you liking the wrong girl."

"Is Qana wrong?"

Spike thought about it and was surprised to discover she absolutely loathed Qana, despite the thought never having once occurred to her before. "Definitely," she said, much too confidently. "Her hair is, um… white. She wouldn't contrast with you enough. And she's quiet! You said you didn't like how quiet boys are, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I did say that!" Gliss smiled at her, and Spike felt uneasy for too many reasons to pin down any of them. "You're such a good friend, Spike, helping me keep track of all this! Dating is new and exciting but I just know I can make it work with you helping me!"

"Oh boy," said Spike, "doesn't that just sound hilarious," and then there was nothing more to say for the rest of their flight. Snowy hills, frozen bushes, and frost-laden trees passed unseen below them as they flew, Gliss doing the occasional corkscrew spin in midair and Spike tracing a straight line through the air, until they were hovering at the Keeper's huge front door and each was very politely refusing to be the one to actually open it. It wasn't that the door was heavy, and it wasn't that the Keeper was unkind or even imposing, but he was certainly important and they suddenly felt very uninvited and very insignificant.

"What if," said Gliss, squeezing her palms together, "we just waited out here until he came outside? Then we wouldn't be disturbing him while he's writing books! That sounds nice and safe ooh we should do that."

Spike could have come up with a number of answers to this, such as suggesting that the Keeper probably slept in his library and might never come out on his own, but she had gotten tired of the dithering. Also she was cultivating a desire to see their little adventure to its completion. Gliss had said she was her best friend—she smiled a little at the memory—and it was definitely her friendly duty to accompany Gliss along the way, at least until she could convince her the whole thing was a bad idea and they should go back to their normal lives of playing with frost and being jealous of Sled.

No, wait, that last part was just Gliss, she was fairly sure.

"Ugh!" Spike aimed the noise both at Gliss and at herself and flung the big double doors open as hard as she could. Gliss gave an excited shiver and darted inside, fears of insignificance apparently forgotten, and Spike flew after her.

The Keeper's dwelling was, above all else, huge. The ceiling stretched farther up than a fairy could see, the walls were lined with frozen pillars and enormous snowflakes, and there was so much room everywhere that the entryway was lined with stacks of ice with no obvious purpose. Some did appear to be makeshift shelves, filled with more books than Spike thought she could ever read, but more of them lived somewhere indefinable between laziness and ostentatiousness. The building was huge and silent and nearly empty, and Spike was just reconsidering her earlier friendly bravery when the Keeper himself appeared, tiny and bespectacled and clutching his oversized staff.

"Visitors!" he said, and Spike and Gliss exchanged relieved glances at how welcoming he made the word sound. "Goodness, how nice! And don't you look familiar, too? Now let me see, it's on the tip of my tongue…"

"I'm Gliss!" said Gliss. "And this is Spike. She can be kinda dour but you'll like her, you'll see!"

Spike rolled her eyes. It was hardly the first time she'd been introduced that way. "We're friends of Periwinkle," she said instead of trying for any sort of rebuke. "We actually met you at the pixie dust stream, when the Freeze happened?"

"Of course, of course!" The Keeper beamed at them both, seemingly paying no heed at all to Gliss's warnings of dourness, and beckoned them further inside. "Now, I could never say no to a friend of Peri's. Won't you sit? And tell me what you're here for, I'm always happy to help!"

Gliss glanced at Spike, and Spike offered her most supportive shrug. "Um…" Gliss pressed her hands together again and looked beseeching. "I want a girlfriend!"

"But we don't know if that's allowed."

"Right! Or really how to date in the first place. She's going to be my first and I want to do everything right, you know?"

"Whoever she is," added Spike, but the Keeper had already buzzed off among his many shelves, searching through their names and muttering to himself. Gliss was barely able to stay behind as she watched him, her wings flickering up and down and her legs trembling, and Spike watched her in turn. Excitement was nothing new for Gliss, but she could almost convince herself that Gliss seemed more excited than usual. Maybe this really was something important to her.

Spike stifled a sigh. She still had misgivings about this plan that she hadn't been able to pin down, but a real friend would do her best to help Gliss along the way, at least until she could figure out what her problem was. She knew all too well that Gliss would have done the same for her, given the chance, though Spike always took care not to expose her weaknesses like that. Let Gliss be the hero and Spike the sidekick and she'd be perfectly happy… Gliss was happy and devoted and beautiful, and she'd been such a consistently caring friend that Spike would do anything for her.

That was a strange train of thought, and Spike felt relieved when the Keeper buzzed back down to interrupt it. He handed Gliss a dark red book and beamed at them both from his vantage point near the top of his staff.

"There you go! Dating, eh? Well girls, I've got a big deadline coming up for his Lord Milori, so I can't be chitchatting as much as I'd like, but this here book should tell you everything you need. Wrote it myself! I used to be quite the ladykiller in my youth, don't you know?"

Spike saw the opportunity for a sarcastic remark and was just wondering how rude it would be to mention his height when Gliss beat her to the punch. "Thank you!" she said, and floated off the ground a little. "But it is okay, right? I can find a nice fairy and date her with no sparrow men involved at all, and I won't get locked in prison and the Winter Woods won't melt or anything awful like that?!"

Dewey didn't even hesitate. "Well, it's perfectly okay by me! Love's a beautiful thing, and if there's any rule against loving someone then I haven't heard of it, and any rule I've not heard of isn't a rule at all! Now then, you two be on your way and don't worry about a thing. Old Dewey knows a cute couple when he sees one and you two are the cutest I've seen in a hawk's age." He tapped his staff expectantly on the icy floor while every drop of blood in Spike's body decided to make its way into her head at once. "Now shoo! Go off and do the smoochings and the canoodlings and let me finish this deadline business."

Several minutes later, Spike and Gliss were still standing outside the Keeper's front doors, staring wordlessly into the distance. Spike could see the red book still clutched to Gliss's chest, but she didn't quite dare look at her face and rather hoped that Gliss was extending the same courtesy to her. "Well," she finally said, "maybe we should let me do the talking about this from now on, unless you'd like everyone from Lord Milori on down thinking we're deeply in love and, uh, doing the smoochings?"

"Oh, Spikey, I'm sorry!" Gliss sounded miserable and Spike stared at her in alarm, since she'd never heard such a thing before and hadn't expected it in the least. "I'd fly backwards if I could! Do you think he'll tell anyone? If you want I can go around to every sparrow man I know, or only the cute ones if you'd rather, and I'll make sure they know that you actually like boys and they shouldn't believe everything they hear!" Somehow she was slipping back into her usual excitement and yet Spike was only getting more alarmed. "Oh, we could have a dating party for you! Or a bachelor auction? I'll fix this, I promise!"

"Gliss!" She'd almost shouted the name, and Gliss shut up in an instant. Spike looked down at the ground in embarrassment. "It's fine, all right? I… I'm not really looking for anyone right now, okay? Besides," she added after a moment's thought, totally discarding her earlier complaint, "you should know I don't care what a bunch of random pixies think of me."

"Oh." Gliss scrunched up her face in thought for a moment before flying over and enveloping Spike in a hug. "If you're sure," she said. "But I really would fly backwards!"

Spike returned the hug uncertainly. Suddenly she felt very little in control of events and didn't know what to do but support Gliss as far as she could and hope everything would turn out for the best. "Better not," she said after a moment. "Not unless you want to follow Qana's example, anyhow."

"Oh yeah! You know, Spike, I think you're right. I can totally do better than her! I just need to figure out this dating thing, and I bet I'll kill way more ladies than that old Keeper guy ever dreamed of!"

"Of course you can." She wasn't even sure if she was joking. "Let's take a look at that book, then, all right?"


	4. Chapter 4

"I seriously can't believe you told Periwinkle we're dating."

"I didn't mean to! All I told her was we wanted to use some of her Found Things so that we could try using them on a date together. That's barely the same thing!"

"That's precisely the same thing."

"Even if it is, you explained everything to her afterwards so she wouldn't misunderstand! You're really good with words, you know, Spikey. I wish I was smart like you."

A smile cracked Spike's ill-set lips. "You're perfectly clever, Gliss. For one thing, you knew better than I did what the Keeper would say… but, uh, do go on."

"Go on? Doing what, complimenting you?"

"Why not? Otherwise I'll slip away into the throes of depression and all my frost will turn black. You know what a troubled soul I have."

"Oh no!" Gliss flew in quick circles around her with hands clasped tightly together, viewing her from head to toe. Spike tried to look confident yet aloof, like her friend's inspection wasn't really all that important to her, but there was just enough truth in her fanciful warnings of depression that she found herself feeling anxious anyway.

At last Gliss came to a halt a couple inches over Spike's head, and floated there thoughtfully with one hand out as she counted off points on her fingers. "Well, you're really loyal. I know you like to grumble and moan and be sassy—that's the perfect word for you, by the way!—but you never ever let me down and that's just so cool! And even your sassing is important, because sometimes you just have to sit on me and lecture me until I realize I'm getting carried away and should probably calm down."

"That was one time."

"But a fun time! Even if I bit you. Sorry. But my point is that you always want the best for me, and so I guess I want the best for you too, because what kind of friend would I be otherwise? Oh and you're cute! I know you're kinda trying to look uninteresting with your haircut and all, but you ended up with your ear sticking out and that's really cute, and your dress is shiny and stuff! Sometimes I want to touch it but that would probably be rude. I dunno. Should I keep going?"

"Uh." Spike had taken several steps backwards during Gliss's chattering, a little worried that any snow she stood in for too long would melt from the contact. She felt warm, but not warm like she had wandered into the wrong side of Pixie Hollow and her wings were melting. It was a good sort of warm… the kind that made her want to smile and laugh and also get away as quickly as possible because something was clearly very wrong with her. "No, uh, that was just fine. In fact, why don't we get started on our tracks? Extremely far away from each other?"

"Okay! Meet you back here in ten?"

"Fifteen. You can't rush art."

The Keeper's book was proving useful. The first couple of chapters had been about what you should look for in someone if you wanted to date them, but Gliss had skipped those because they felt too much like rules, and the next had been about how to ask someone on a date at all, but Gliss skipped that too because a) that part would come later and b) she'd already tried that with Qana and there'd been only one comparatively minor injury. Spike offered a few half-hearted pleas for reading the book in linear order, but Gliss had insisted her enthusiasm would see her through all that stuff, and Spike had relented—remarkably good-naturedly, at least in her own opinion.

Most of the rest of the book was about possible dating activities, ranging from the simplest to the most heavily romantic, and Gliss had told Spike to pick a page for her at random and they'd ended up picking golfing. Specifically miniature golfing, because the page had offered both possibilities but Spike had pointed out they were fairies and fairies were about as miniature as it got, even if Gliss was a little taller than her. On a good day. In the right shoes. Maybe.

"But I've never tried golf before," Gliss had said, and she'd stared at the book like it'd betrayed her and she didn't know what to think anymore. "What if I don't like it?!"

"The introduction says that doesn't matter." Spike had read the introduction; Gliss had not. "The activities are really just excuses to spend time with the fairy you love, and if you love them enough, that'll make up for anything boring that happens along the way."

"But I don't love anyone like that yet!" Gliss tossed the book away—Spike narrowly caught it before it was impaled on a briar plant—and flung herself bodily into the snow. "Don't you see, Spike? Somewhere out there is The One, and what if I ask her to go golfing with me and I don't have a good time but I blame it on her instead of on the golf? And then we never talk to each other again and I've lost my only chance for eternal happiness!"

"The introduction says that holding out for a one true love is a recipe for frustration and constant doubt…"

"Flaming ferrets, Spike, you can't learn love from a book." Gliss blew some of the snow away from her face, stared at the flakes while they settled elsewhere, and—much to Spike's relief—brightened. She'd had an idea again and wasn't looking so upset and cuddleworthy. "I've got it!"

Spike set the book aside and stretched her arms behind her back. "Enlighten me."

"I'll go on a golfing date with you first!"

Spike's arms froze in place. "…what?"

"It's perfect!" Gliss shot back into the air and shook herself, snow flying in every direction and just missing hitting Spike in the face. "I really like you and we know that already. So if there's anything in this book I'm not familiar with, we can just do it together so I can learn how I feel about it, and then I'll know what to do when dating other fairies and how much I'm reacting to how boring golf is and how much I'm just in love!"

Slowly, very slowly, Spike moved her arms back into place and looked into Gliss's delighted features. Her hair had gotten all messed up by her roll in the snow and made her look particularly adorable, and her solution did make a lot of sense. She allowed herself a grin. "So you want me for your control group."

"My what? No, I want you to be my practice date. You will, won't you? You're such a good friend!"

"I am a perfect friend." Unless, of course, she wasn't. "Fine, come on, I bet Periwinkle has some stuff we can use…"

And so they'd gone to Periwinkle's place and Spike had rummaged through her Found Things collection for a couple of beads they could use as golf balls, and Gliss had run off at the mouth until Periwinkle got entirely the wrong idea and squealed with delight and completely invaded Spike's personal space. So Spike had been forced to explain in great detail what was really going on, that they weren't in love in the slightest and they were only going on a date because they liked each other a lot and Gliss wanted to be able to do the same thing later with other fairies. Then if she didn't have as much fun with them as she'd had with Spike, it probably wouldn't work out, but if she had even more fun, maybe they could really have something.

And if she had exactly as much fun with another fairy as she'd had with Spike, what would that mean? Well, that would be Gliss's problem, not hers!

Spike took a step back and looked over her work. It was magnificent. Periwinkle's beads didn't roll well in snow, but the Keeper's book had recommended that a good frost fairy could be recruited to construct a track out of frost, and Spike had gone all out. A bead would start in the middle of a little circle of frost with edges tilted upward so that beads would roll back into the center. If you hit your bead hard enough up a forty-five-degree slope, it would sail over a wall, enter a pipe, and spiral down for several full rotations before emerging at the foot of a vast frost castle. A complicated stairway system, complete with regular points for the bead to stop while you waited for your opponent to take her turn, took the bead up to the top of the castle, where it would have to navigate a series of battlements and tiny ice archers before finally ending up in the hole, which she'd modeled after a cannon. Spike smiled. Her visits to the Mainland and its curious range of architecture had really paid off. There was no way Gliss could top her.

She was right. Gliss's track was far simpler, looking like a giant uppercase U with the beads starting at one end and the hole at the other. There was a small icebank blocking the hole from the easiest access, but most of the difficulty looked like it would come from the track's surface, which rose and fell in a highly irregular wave pattern. Spike raised an eyebrow at the sight, and Gliss sheepishly explained she'd been too excited to lay out a smoother floor.

Gliss took the first turn. She grabbed the thinnest twig she could find, took aim, and gave her bead a surprisingly gentle whack. Her bead sailed forwards, up and down along the track's bumpy surface before getting stuck between two particularly steep rises about halfway to the big curve. Gliss stuck out her tongue at the bead.

Spike hovered up to the starting point, placed her bead, readied her twig, and swung. Nothing happened. She looked down and found the bead exactly where she'd left it, showing no signs of movement. Again she swung, and there was no sound and no movement. By the fourth failed swing Gliss was starting to laugh, and Spike spun around to glare at her.

"What?!"

"You're holding it all wrong!" Gliss doubled over in midair for a moment. "You should see how silly you look."

"Well golly gee, maybe you could take another swing and show me how it's done."

"I can't, I can't, it's not my turn!" Gliss made a valiant effort to stop laughing, which Spike guessed she appreciated, angry though she was feeling at her stupid twig. "But I'll help you with your grip, okay?"

Just like that Gliss was floating at Spike's back with her arms around her, holding Spike's hands and moving them into a new position, and Spike was all warm again. She and Gliss had touched either other plenty of times before, and Spike had even carried her all the way home, but there was something awfully, well, intimate about this particular hold. Gliss's fingers were slipping over hers and bending them around the twig, and it felt good in ways Spike was afraid to understand.

"There. Try it now!"

"Thanks. You're, uh, good at this, you know. You should try it when you're on your real date…"

"Oh really? Thanks!" But even in Gliss's chirpy answer Spike thought she could hear a little anxiety. She shoved that thought aside, focused on the bead below her, drew back her twig, and swung. At last the twig hit the bead.

Unfortunately it hit much too hard, and the bead flew madly through the air and smashed right through the frosted curve of Gliss's track. It kept on flying after that, passing through the tops of several snowbanks before finally hitting the side of a tree, which shuddered from the impact and dropped a tangle of icicles on top of the bead. The fairies winced as one, and after several long seconds Gliss suggested they take a look at what Spike had made instead.

Spike was able to regain some of her smugness at the sight of Gliss, unnaturally speechless, flying around the castle and taking it in from all angles with a look of wonder. She peeked at the cannon, cooed over the little ice archers, even traced the beads' path up the staircase with one delighted finger. She looked enraptured when she returned, and Spike crossed her arms and waited for the inevitable praise.

"Oh, Spikey, this is beautiful!"

"I know.' Then because that didn't seem like quite enough to say, "So do you want to go first?"

"Go first…? Oh gosh, no, we can't!" Spike curled herself into a ball in midair, wings pumping madly, and pointed behind her. "What if we broke it?! I'm not nearly good enough to handle something like this, and if I'm not, neither are you."

That should have hurt, but Spike had to admit she was right. Her swings had after all been consistently terrible. "But it's right there!" she protested. "I made it for us!"

"I know! I can see it. But we're not ready yet. Something that amazing, that's for later."

"But we have something beautiful already." Spike chewed on her lip. "Does the future really need to be different?"

Gliss looked at her curiously. "Are you still talking about mini-golf?"

"I don't know."

"Oh. Okay!" Gliss shrugged and grabbed her arm. "Come on, let's go back to mine for now. I'm having fun so far, aren't you? We just need to get better!"

"…okay." She jumped into the air and followed Gliss among the trees. "We can fix that hole together, I guess. Um, do you want to help me with my grip again?"

"Sure!"

Then yes, Spike supposed she was having fun too.


	5. Chapter 5

The Frozen Fjord was among the Winter Woods' most distinctive features: a long ribbon of solid ice, several fairies wide, that ran through the entire length of the forest and made one part of Winter technically a separate island. Presumably the fjord didn't run incredibly deep, and the two islands were in fact connected a little ways below the surface, but the ice was much too thick to crack so there was no way of finding out for sure.

Or so Spike had always believed, but then Gliss had found a page in the dating book that suggested couples go rafting together, and Spike didn't want to go over to the warm side of Pixie Hollow so that meant they had to melt the fjord. Which sounded like a recipe for disaster, so Spike had made Gliss promise that whatever idea she came up with couldn't possibly end up melting the entire Winter Woods, and she'd acted very innocent and affronted but had eventually promised. And then disappeared.

For days.

Spike had made use of this respite to spend some time with Periwinkle instead. Periwinkle was bored because her sister was busy with some elaborate project and none of the other warm fairies were visiting quite so frequently anymore, except for the garden fairy who was obviously only there for Sled. Spike suggested that Periwinkle could use some of her free time to practice frost fairying, and they both laughed because that was such a Gliss thing to say.

"It sounds like she's really rubbing off on you," said Periwinkle, and tossed an icy pebble at a row of stalagmites. One broke, and she cheered.

"That's one way of putting it." Spike tossed her own pebble and failed to score any points. "Or making off. I wish I knew where that girl's gone to."

Periwinkle leaned backwards, stretching her back and looking oddly beguiling. "Would you rather be making out?"

"What?!" Spike sprang to her feet and hit her head on a rocky outcropping. She winced in pain. "Jingles, Periwinkle, I thought I explained this to you!"

"You did! But you went on one date together and now you're sad that she's standing you up. It's perfectly normal."

"I am not being stood up!" Especially since standing up hurt. She rubbed her head and grimaced. "We're just friends, only sometimes she does stupid stuff like this disappearing act and maybe she doesn't even deserve that. Did you know I carried her all the way to her house the other day? The whole way! And this is the kind of thanks I get. Honestly, if I didn't have so much fun with her..."

"Oh, Spike, I'm sorry!" Periwinkle rose—much more carefully—and moved over to rest her hand on Spike's shoulder. "I didn't mean to get you mad. I've just been feeling so bored lately, and you usually don't mind people teasing you…"

"I don't mind Gliss teasing me," said Spike all but automatically, and noticed it was true. She knew Gliss would never mean anything hurtful by it, but she didn't know Periwinkle well enough to trust her that much, and whose fault was that? Spike was… well, maybe not more outgoing than Periwinkle, since she was too busy being smug and so on, but certainly less sad. Less wistful. Years of Gliss had given her a can-do attitude that Periwinkle lacked, so if they weren't very good friends, she was almost certainly to blame.

Either that or Periwinkle had seen that Spike wasn't the best fairy to make friends with in the first place. That was always a possibility, even if she'd managed to go years without giving Gliss that same realization, unless that was why she had gone…? No, Gliss would come back for her, she was sure of it. Almost completely sure. Mostly.

"Look," she said, a little forcefully, "forget about me. What do I care if Gliss is gone somewhere? That just gives us more time to think of something to shock the boredom out of you. What do you want to do?"

"Oh, I don't know." Periwinkle's eyes were soulful and there was a sigh in her voice, but Spike tried not to hold either against her. "Slush is always busy with his glaciers, and Tink has her projects, and Sled is with Rosetta now, and you're with Gliss… sort of, I mean! Maybe I should try dating too? It looks awfully addictive, but kind of fun."

Addictive? Spike let the word roll around on her tongue for a couple seconds. She supposed she had been kind of looking forward to a second date with Gliss, at least until the idiot had vanished like a snowdrop making the crossing. "Fairy or sparrow man?" she asked.

"Does it matter? I'd just like to get to know someone again, like I did with Tink. Only it'd have to be someone who wasn't my sister, of course!"

"Of course." Spike wondered if she knew anyone else who was looking for a relationship, but then knowing other pixies wasn't something she was particularly good at. She shrugged. "If I run into anyone likely, I'll let you know."

"Thank you!" Periwinkle turned to look outside the little cavern they were standing in, and her eyes widened. "Oh! Spike, she's back! And she's… got someone?"

Some elaborate meteorological phenomenon must have taken place just then, for Spike's heart seemed to freeze solid in an instant. Slowly she turned around, and there was Gliss, flying slower than usual because she had another fairy cradled in her arms, just like Spike had done for her, only that was some other fairy and not Spike at all and she felt horribly insulted and horribly confused and generally just horrible.

"Spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike!" No sooner had Gliss deposited the other fairy on the snow beside them than she'd completely surrounded Spike in her arms, and Spike was hugging her back, angry and bewildered but glad she was back all the same. "Spike Spike Spike Spiiiiike! Oh, and Peri too, hi Peri! But Spikey, look who I found, she's perfect!"

Spike looked at the other fairy. She was tallish, short-haired, with very dark skin that was all bundled up inside a big hooded yellow coat. A warm fairy, then. She was greeting Periwinkle, which gave Spike and Gliss time to… break up? No, nonsense. Talk. Time to talk.

"Well, I always knew you worked fast," she said, forcing herself into icy calmness. "So this is her? No more need for my… services?"

"What?" Gliss stared at her in obvious confusion, then started to laugh. "Oh. Ohhhhh! No, no, I didn't mean like that, I'm not dating her!" She stopped suddenly, twin looks of realization and then anticipation settling over her features. "Although… hey, Eerie, do you want to—"

"No thanks." The warm fairy walked forwards, shoulders hunched in a little from the cold, and extended a hand that Spike took on instinct. Meanwhile Gliss flew over to talk with Periwinkle and let them get acquainted. "Hi, I'm Iridessa! I think we've met, actually, in some of your winter sports? I was the one screaming in terror?"

"Yes, that narrows it down so much."

"Really? Because I thought I brought a certain abject, existential misery to my terror. I was pretty proud of it! You really didn't pick up on that?"

"Sorry." Spike looked at the warm fairy, or rather Iridessa, curiously. Maybe she was just talking this way because of the cold, but she carried a certain air of… pessimism? More than Spike was used to seeing in other fairies. It was oddly comforting. "Look," she said, "I'm Spike. Rumor has it that I can be kinda dour but you'll like me. You wouldn't happen to be kinda dour too, would you?"

Iridessa looked surprised, then sniffed and put a dramatic hand to her chest. "I'm a light fairy! We are living beams of warmth and sunshine and happiness."

"Yeah, but Gliss is a frost fairy, and you don't see her being a living layer of cold stillness."

"That's… that's fair." Iridessa scratched the back of her neck, or at least the part of her furry hood that covered it. "Okay fine so I might be a tiny bit dour, but that's just because the other fairies I have to deal with can be so crazy! And anyway I'd rather be thought of as 'cautious' or 'focused' if you don't mind."

Spike grinned. "I can accept that. I pass off mine as an air of intellectual superiority."

"So I take it this wasn't your plan?"

"These practice dates with Gliss? Absolutely not! That nincompoop gets these ideas in her head and I go along with them so she doesn't end up getting too hurt, just because I'm so good-hearted and she's so cute, and then—"

"No, no, I mean about the river." Spike shut up and looked blank, and Iridessa reached around in her coat. "Here." She drew out a large round piece of what Spike guessed was glass, bordered with a ring of shining gold that might have been lost by a clumsy, and waved it around experimentally. "This is a lens. Your girlfriend"—Spike's shoulders rose in alarm, but she sighed and gave up constantly trying to correct everyone—"thinks if I direct some sunbeams into this lens and point it at your frozen river, that'll melt enough of the surface ice that you two can get some rafting done."

"Oh." Spike looked at the lens and frowned. It sounded curiously complicated and practical for a Gliss idea, so whatever plan she'd made at first probably hadn't worked out. She'd need to remember to ask her about that later. "And that won't work?"

"Oh, it'll work fine! I'm an excellent light fairy, you know." Iridessa sniffed again. "And Melina—glass-blowing talent—I trust to make a good lens. But it seems like an awful lot of work just so you two can try rafting in the Winter Woods." They both looked over at Gliss, who was talking animatedly to a much quieter Periwinkle. "She seems very devoted to you."

Spike felt her face go warm, and scratched at the back of her neck in a mirror of Iridessa's earlier gesture until the heat subsided and she trusted herself to talk again. "We, uh, we've been friends a long time. Pretty much since we Arrived, really. But we're just friends, really! She must have explained, we're doing these practice dates so she'll be more confident when she finds someone she really likes, like in that way, and then I can fly off and be proud of her and…" She stopped. She'd never taken the time to wonder what she'd do once Gliss had found herself a real girlfriend. She'd have a lot less time for Spike at that point, that was for sure, and without her Spike could… what? Practice more? Try to set Periwinkle up with someone, maybe? Somehow even that prospect, despite how many opportunities for sarcasm she was sure would present themselves, sounded that much emptier without the promise of Gliss there beside her.

"Intellectual superiority, you say?" asked Iridessa, sounding admirably skeptical, and Spike withered a little under her glance.

"Uh, yeah! Yeah. Why?"

Iridessa shrugged and turned around. "All I'm saying is that for a frost fairy, your face goes warm a lot. Gliss! Are you ready to melt your river?"

Gliss, naturally, was completely ready, and Periwinkle decided to come along and watch, and the four of them set off toward the Frozen Fjord in relative silence. Once they'd gotten there, Gliss took charge of aiming the lens at the icy waters while Iridessa aimed her light beams from down on the ground…

…and then somehow that was the very last thing that Spike could remember. Except for the sounds of screams, and for some reason feeling very, very cold.


	6. Chapter 6

"Spike? Spike? Don't be dead! I don't know what I'd do if you were dead. In fact I don't even know how I'd be able to tell if you were dead! Would you disappear? But you're kinda glowing green and it's scaring me and please stop."

Spike groaned—producing a loud and excited noise from her apparent companion—and tried to figure out where she was and what was going on. Limited experience notwithstanding, she didn't feel especially dead? For one thing there were way too many sensations to sort through. Her body felt cold on the inside and warm on the outside, and her wings felt squashed, and her head hurt, and her eyes were closed. Dimly Spike decided that opening them would be a good idea. She tried it. There was a Gliss uncomfortably close in front of her.

Spike forced her eyes downwards. She seemed to be wrapped up in thick blue leaves, and under that she was wearing a yellow coat which she last remembered seeing on Iridessa. Well, that explained her wings. But why did she feel so cold?

"What happened?"

"You're alive!"

"Let's say yes. And talk slowly, Gliss, please; my head hurts."

This was a challenge for Gliss, but she did her best by venting her energy on flying agitatedly about the room instead of talking too fast, and gradually the missing section in Spike's memory was filled in. Iridessa and her lens had apparently worked perfectly, and she had stayed with Periwinkle to watch Spike and Gliss try out rafting. Only Gliss had gotten a little too excited—this part of the story was peppered with apologies—and rammed Spike's ice floe with her own, and after they went back and forth a few times, Spike had lost her balance and fell into the fjord. Somehow they had managed to pull her back out again, and now she was lying in Gliss's bedroom wearing Iridessa's coat and apparently not dead. Huh.

A potential issue tickled her mind. "So if Iridessa's a warm fairy, and I'm wearing her coat…"

"She's fine!" Gliss patted her on the head. "She and Peri made a fire, so now she's sitting by that while Peri goes to get some warm fairies to help her back over the crossing. Unless that's already happened, I guess. But there's no need to worry."

"But worrying is what I do best," answered Spike, and Gliss giggled at her joke. Yes, she couldn't be feeling too bad if she was still capable of jokes. A little more rest and she'd be up to complaining, and she wouldn't be surprised if she could cast withering glances again in a day or two. A week and she'd be able to chop down saplings with a single lash of her razor wit, and she could work her way up from there all the way to wrapping herself in a cocoon and emerging as a butterfly of pure sarcasm. That sounded like a safe way to live.

But then, she supposed, a butterfly would miss out on her friend who'd apparently finally returned the favor of carrying her home. So that was a no go. "It all sounds like a grand adventure," she said, and smiled in what felt very akin to contentment. "Although I'm sorry I put you through it. Periwinkle's plan, or Iridessa's?"

"Nope, it was mine! The moment I saw you fall in the melted ice I just started giving everyone orders and I made them set up the fire and give you Eerie's coat and everything."

Spike blinked. "It was all your idea? And no one died at all?"

"Not that I've noticed. You should be proud of me!"

"You know, I think I am."

"Awwwww!" Gliss leapt onto the bed and wrapped Spike in a hug, and after a moment of confusion and disarray Spike managed to extract her arms from the leaves around her enough to return it. She agonized over the decision for a moment and then decided to smile. If nothing else, her friend's added weight made her feel that much warmer, and she did deserve some gratitude. Gliss might very well have just saved Spike's life, for all it was her fault she'd needed saving in the first place.

As time went on it became clear that Gliss had no intention of letting her go, and Spike wondered what she was supposed to do next. She petted Gliss's back below the point where her wings extended, feeling rather ridiculous for doing so, since Gliss was not the victim of their misadventure and therefore clearly not the one in need of comforting. But the longer she petted her, the more she became aware that Gliss was trembling, and once she'd realized that, the feeling of something wet getting on her cheek started making more sense.

"Gliss…?"

"You almost died!" Gliss pulled back from the hug just enough to stare at her, still uncomfortably close, but Spike was more concerned about the tears running down her friend's face where she'd never once seen tears before. "You could have drowned, or frozen to death, or maybe both, and I've been so busy getting you out and bringing you here and keeping you warm I haven't had time to think about that, but then it was like a whole mountain fell on me all at once because you were so close to being dead and it was completely my fault and I'm sorry, so sorry!"

Spike hugged her more tightly, now rather alarmed. "There, there," she said, because she couldn't exactly disagree with anything Gliss had just said on any factual basis but felt obliged to say something nonetheless. "I'm not dead, am I?"

"You're still glowing green! I mean okay, just a little bit, but it's there." Gliss sneezed miserably and wiped her face on the hood of Iridessa's coat, and Spike instantly decided not to mention that when they eventually returned it. "Oh, Spikey! If I hadn't made you go on these dates with me this would never have happened."

"So you'd have gone rafting with Qana in my place and gotten her almost killed instead." She thought about it. "Twice."

Gliss looked thoroughly alarmed by this suggestion. "You're right! Do you think maybe rafts are just inherently dangerous?"

"For a species that can't really swim and can't fly with wet wings? No, that sounds perfectly safe to me."

"You are feeling better!" said Gliss, not in the least put off by Spike's mocking tones. She got another hug for her efforts. "Awww, Spike. I really am sorry I almost got you killed."

"Not a problem. I've been expecting it to happen for years."

"That's mean! But you might be right." Gliss watched Spike yawn and frowned deeply. "Look, for our next date I'll let you pick whatever you want and it can be the very safest thing in the world and I won't complain at all, okay? We could pretend to be glacier fairies and sit around silently for hours and I promise I probably wouldn't mind. And meanwhile I'll keep you warm and fed and cozy as long as you like!"

Some part of Spike's mind was taking the time to feel alarmed that a third date had somehow been decided on without consulting her, but she couldn't really bring herself to complain about it. They were still doing this for Gliss, after all, and if Gliss was going to have a successful time flying around wooing other fairies at random, she really ought to have experience with dates that didn't involve unusable golf courses or near-death experiences. At least one such, anyhow. So she shrugged.

"As for safe activities," she said, "right now I should audition to be a getting-some-rest-talent fairy."

"Oh! Okay, sure!" Gliss bounced backwards a little ways, looked around her in seeming confusion, and then clasped her hands together awkwardly. "So, um, Spike…"

A feeling of foreboding settled over her. "Yes?"

"Well, I like your idea! Especially after all that carrying you and freaking out and everything. But, see, it's just that I've only got the one bed."

Spike groaned. "Fine. Get in here."

Gliss cheeped happily and burrowed into the cotton beside Spike, and they quietly negotiated shared ownership of the leaf blankets. Somehow Gliss's head ended up resting on Spike's shoulder, and she clutched at Spike's arm through the coat like she couldn't be sure it was really there, but Spike didn't bother trying to stop her. No matter what either of them said or did, it seemed that they always ended up doing exactly what Gliss wanted, and after a point there just wasn't any use in fighting it. For all Gliss had said she'd let Spike decide what they'd do next, Spike was prepared to bet that if Gliss did end up objecting then they'd go along with her objection instead.

And the worst part was, she probably wouldn't even notice that she'd done anything.

Gliss was the east wind, big and powerful and ceaseless, and Spike was a hapless baby bird caught up in her gusts and blown along with her. In her booming voice Gliss would ask where Spike wanted to go, and Spike would say that she wanted to go west, and Gliss would happily agree to take her there. But they'd end up going east anyway, and if anything Spike-the-bird's wings would only end up flapping along with her to make the journey even faster. Not that such a tiny effort was needed by the colossal power of an entire wind.

East or west, however, Spike couldn't deny that they were getting close to their destination. A baby bird needed a wind to carry it along if it wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, but a wind didn't need a bird at all. Soon Qana would find them again or Gliss would find yet another fairy to ask on a date without warning, and they'd fall madly in love and Spike would be motionless. Useless. Forgotten.

Unless she could flap her tiny wings and divert the wind somehow, but just as surely as she knew Gliss would abandon the entire quest if Spike begged her to, she also knew that option was completely off the table. Gliss had seen a better golf course out in her future, one that could bring her real happiness, and Spike couldn't force her to stay at their old one just because Spike didn't want to let her go.

"…hey, Spike?" Gliss's voice was soft and quiet and altogether timid, which would have been terrifying if Spike hadn't seen her crying and miserable just a few minutes earlier and thus already been scarred for life.

"Yeah?"

"Remember when you told me that you couldn't be with a girl, because you thought there was a rule against it, because you couldn't think of anyone ever doing it? But then the Keeper said it was fine anyway?"

Spike felt the back of her neck turn to ice. "That all sounds familiar."

"Well… I'm sure you've thought of this already, but if that's true, I guess you could have a girlfriend after all, right? If you wanted one?"

"If I wanted one. And if some girl wanted me too, but seriously, what are the odds of—"

"But what if some girl did?" asked Gliss, not letting Spike finish her self-deprecation, and Spike had nothing to say to that. Gliss's voice was still quiet but her every word felt like a clumsy's foot landing on Spike's chest. "Girls are cool, aren't they? Wouldn't that be nice?"

There was a wind surrounding Spike, and the wind was asking look, have you ever considered the possibility that the world is round? What do you suppose might happen if going east and going west actually took you to the same place?

There was a little silver bead pressed into Spike's shoulder and pretending to be a golf ball, and the bead was saying hey, you're very clever and impressive with your profound metaphors about castles and romance, but shouldn't you be admitting that you were the one who made that beautiful castle in the first place?

There was a warm fairy holding a warm thing in a cold place, showing her friends that the warm thing was still alive, and she was told that Gliss had the power to do that, the power to keep things safe and warm and alive, because frost keeps out the cold.

And then there was Spike, wrapped up in leaves in her best friend's bed and only mostly alive, and all she knew how to say was "I don't know."

"You don't know how you yourself feel?"

"I don't know."

"Oh. Well, Spikey, when I don't know something, I usually just ask another fairy to help me out!"

Spike could have screamed. "Yeah, but you always ask me! Who am I supposed to ask, Gliss? Where am I supposed to find my own handy-dandy mentor to answer all my own riddles? Who solves my problems?!"

"Oh." Gliss was silent for a long time, and her voice was very quiet when she did answer. "I guess I don't know that either."


	7. Chapter 7

"Fly with you, Sled?"

"Hey Spike! Fly with you too."

"No, I mean literally. Can I fly with you?"

"Oh!" Sled looked down at the large white rabbit that was his mount, a furry creature with droopy ears and a wandering nose. "Not if we're talking literally, I guess. But you're welcome to fly next to me while I ride?"

Spike smiled. "That would be great."

The rabbit ambled on for several silent minutes with Spike floating listlessly alongside. She had only a dim understanding of Sled's animal-talent duties, which mostly seemed to consist of hanging out with various creatures and telling them what a good job they were doing. It didn't seem to involve nearly as much artistry as frosting things, and the results were rather more likely to lick you without warning and get your clothes all slimy. But he struck her as a kind soul, and since he was so understanding and supportive of animals, then maybe he could provide the same sort of service to a frightened frost fairy.

But animals had all sorts of ways of making their distress obvious—some that Spike could detect, like howling or crying or falling over, and she presumed plenty of others that Sled could notice in a heartbeat but she couldn't possibly have recognized—and Spike had only her words to work with. And her temperament, she supposed, but the downside to a reputation for being sullen was that maybe people didn't notice when you weren't actually feeling so hot. So she tried half a dozen times to explain her problem, only to find the words getting stuck in her throat every time she began.

Finally Sled either noticed or took pity on her. "I've heard you and Gliss have been having quite the rough time of it!" he said, and chuckled. "Falling out of trees, falling into melted ice… how do you find the time to do anything but fall?"

"Oh, you know, we take it in turns." Spike kept her tone vague as she slid around a falling snowflake. "Right now I'm talking to you, so she's busy falling in with pirates. Then later she'll try to cheer up Periwinkle, and I'll take some time to fall upon an unsuspecting sparrow man and, I don't know, steal his purse. Only I guess you guys don't really wear purses, so never mind."

"Nope." Sled grinned at her like a coconspirator. "Let me know if I can help! I could, let's see… fall for your clever traps?"

"Hmmm. Or you could fall for a certain garden fairy?"

That brought Sled up short, which was an impressive trick considering he was riding a rabbit and the rabbit presumably shouldn't have reacted to what she'd said. Maybe they were just in that close a rapport. Either way, she got a kick out of the red spreading into his face. "Rosetta's, well… yes. She's very nice."

"And cute? Or I suppose you never make eyes at her behind her back."

"I'm… not sure I follow. But she's lovely, sure, and sophisticated and sensitive, so I hope you won't be too harsh with her."

Sled and his rabbit began moving again, but it took Spike a moment to catch back up with them, having found herself frozen in midair for a moment. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

"Hey, don't get me wrong!" He put up his hands, and Spike was embarrassed to discover she'd drifted into a confrontational pose with her fingers drifting gradually into fists. She righted herself and tried to look innocent or at least non-violent while he continued. "I like swapping jokes with you, and you're a decent third in a snowball fight! Could get better at distance. But if you started talking to Rosetta, I'm worried she'd be flying away in tears in five minutes."

Already Spike was regretting their conversation, but something told her this was something she needed to hear. "Again, what's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, your wit! You know, how you're always picking on everyone and everything." He leaned over to look at her with his brow lowered in concern. "You okay, Spike girl? I mean, this stuff is basically your MO, right?"

"I guess…" She stared down at the snow, not in the mood to meet his eyes. Everything? Everyone? Yeah, she prided herself on her scorn and sarcasm and so on, but it sounded different when somebody else was talking about it, particularly when he was worried that she could end up actually hurting someone, emotionally or otherwise. But that didn't mean she was unfriendly, just because she'd been criticizing Periwinkle's gumption or suddenly loathing Qana or mentally accusing Rosetta of being weak-kneed and simpering or…

Then again, maybe she had a problem.

"So, uh, Sled? What exactly do you think about me?"

The question seemed to take him by surprise, if the rabbit's sudden stumble was anything to go by. "Well," he said after a moment, "I could tell you, I guess! But wouldn't you rather get back to riffing? I thought we had a good thing going with the falling stuff."

"No." That time she made no effort to keep herself sounding aloof or disinterested, no excuses for her investment in the question. "There's this, uh, pixie I know, and I'm trying to figure out how I feel about h—them. And vice versa. How I come off to other fairies, you know?"

"Huh. Okay!" He whistled, but no animals appeared at the call so Spike supposed it was just a sign of his surprise. "Do you know the clumsy story about the ugly duckling?"

"Sled, do I really look like a clumsy enthusia—okay, fine, somewhat. Heard it from Peri… there's an ugly duckling born among a lot of much prettier ducklings, but then later it turns out it's a swan." She frowned. "I should mention neither of us knew what a swan is."

"Hah! It's a big white bird, but the point is they're supposed to be prettier than ducks."

"So you're saying that ugly fairies will turn out beautiful if they wait long enough?" She rolled her eyes. "Okay, let me guess which point in this story you're comparing me to…"

Sled cut her off. "No, that's just the clumsy version. The real story is how the ugly duckling lives after it's realized it's a swan! Think about it: you've lived your whole life dwelling on how ugly you are, and suddenly you're not ugly anymore, but your mind isn't going to catch up with that right away."

'Right. And anytime anyone treats you well, you're going to wonder if they're just being nice because they think you're pretty?"

"You got it!"

"Great. Now could you tell me all that again, but pretending for a moment that I'm not an animal-talent fairy maintaining an elaborate disguise?"

"It's not a perfect analogy anyway." They'd reached the crossing, and Sled dismounted with a graceful leap. Slowly the rabbit ascended the log, sniffed the winter air one more time, and set off into the warmer world. The fur on its back turned short and brown. Not until it had turned a bend and vanished behind some trees did Sled deign to finish his explanation.

"I haven't known you as long as Gliss has," he said, slowly and thoughtfully, and Spike managed not to try to hurry him, "so I don't know if you were ever actually a duckling. All I can say is that you're a swan right now. You're smart, you're caring, you're dedicated. Heh, I'll even throw in that you're pretty, since the odds are basically nil that you're trying to flirt with me right now.

"But you don't act like you believe anything I just said. Again, I'm not knocking the jokes! Keep'em coming! But sometimes your jokes are a bit more, I dunno, cruel than funny, like you're maybe trying to get pixies to dislike you. Pixies who count you as their friend. And I don't know why you'd do that, unless you dislike yourself and want to be able to use everyone else's feelings as an excuse."

"I have plenty of wonderful qualities!"

"Yeah?" Sled gazed at her seriously. "Not saying you don't, Spike, but when was the last time you let us in on them? When was the last time that, instead of making jokes about what stuff we've done or said, you told us anything about yourself at all?"

Too many memories invaded Spike's head. When she and her friends went skating or tobogganing, did she ever actually say she wanted to go? Or did she just accompany them by default and pretend she was doing them a reluctant favor if they did mention it? What did her friends really know about her? Did anyone besides Gliss know she dyed her hair? Did even Gliss know why she'd done it? How could anyone stand her?

Maybe it wasn't her fault and nobody ever asked her anything? But only the other day she'd told Periwinkle to forget about her so they could talk about Periwinkle's problems instead, and she was sure she'd said those very words plenty of other times. She was always giving up her time and putting her life on the line for Gliss and the others, but at what point did loyalty cross over into laziness? Not physical laziness, but intellectual or maybe even emotional. Was it just easier to help with someone else's life than to worry about her own?

And if by some obscure chance she wanted to change anything about herself, how could she count on anyone's help after working so hard to burn all her bridges?

Although she supposed fairies didn't really need bridges, given that they could fly.

"Spike? Spike, come on man, talk to me. I didn't mean to... look, Spike, I went too far, okay? I'd fly backwards and all that. Come on, are you okay in there?"

Dimly Spike noticed that she was kneeling in the snow. Her wings must have stopped flapping at some point. Sled had a thick arm around her shoulders, and there was something bizarre and wet on her face that she suspected of being tears. Wonderful. It wasn't enough to make Gliss cry, she'd had to go and make herself start weeping too. Who next? How many more lives could she possibly screw up before Gliss's little adventure was over?

"Why?" she asked.

"Uh… why what?"

"Why are you here? Why are any of you here? If I'm so awful, why do you never leave me be?"

Sled shifted his weight to sit in the snow beside her, arm still wrapped around her, and she felt ridiculously grateful for it. "I guess we're just not as smart as you are!" he said, with a chuckle that sounded more automatic than sincere. "But I'm sure we have some reason to like you. So maybe you could try trusting us enough to figure out what it is."

Trust. Heh. She couldn't trust herself and Sled wanted her to start trusting other pixies? If he knew even half how horrible she was, he'd be off with his animals in a trice and she'd never see him again. Slush wouldn't need much convincing, and it wouldn't be difficult to really hurt Periwinkle's feelings if she was trying, and Gliss…

She couldn't think of anything she could do to make Gliss stop loving her. And that was terrifying.

Spike choked back a sob and settled into Sled's comforting arm. There was another option. Instead of working to drive her friends away she could try bringing them closer instead, even if that would mean opening up some of her doors. Sled seemed to think there was more to her than cruelty, and maybe he was right? Couldn't she be herself, clever and joking and supportive, but do all that while sharing her feelings instead of heartless jibes? Where would she even begin?

She guessed she'd have to begin with Sled. She turned her head to look at him; she knew the tears on her face probably made her look ridiculous, but she forced herself to ignore them or at least to assume that Sled would. "I used to have white hair."

"For real?"

"Yeah. I've been dyeing it for years, because Gliss… well, it's a long story. No!" She slapped herself, and Sled winced. "No, calling it a long story isn't good enough! I'm trying to be open! I'm trying to say what's important!"

"What is important?" Sled watched her as kindly as he watched any of his animals, and Spike shivered.

"Gliss. Gliss is important." She wiped the tears from her face with one hand and laughed bitterly. "She's in love with me. She basically told me so the other night. And I..." She stopped, but Sled said nothing to help her along, and after a few seconds she managed to keep going. "I don't know. I like her if I like anyone. But it all feels so wrong, and I honestly still don't know why, not really, and I can't tell her—"

"Why not? It sounds like if there's anyone you should be telling about this, it's Gliss!"

"But I can't!" She struggled against Sled's arm, but he didn't seem ready to allow her to escape so easily. "I can't, Sled, I'll just run away or something!"

"How do you know?"

"I'm really good at running away!"

"But it's Gliss."

"I can't!"

"Please?"

She stared into the snow for a long time.

"I'll try." And then he let her go.


	8. Chapter 8

The trouble with snowflake-talents was they thought they were special. They weren't exactly ice fairies but they weren't exactly warm fairies either, so they lived wherever they wanted and ignored Lord Milori's old rule and attended Arrivals on both sides of the crossing. All this led them to exaggerated senses of self-importance and condescending attitudes and…

Spike sighed. No, that was the old Spike's way of thinking about it, the Spike who was quick to leap to the unkindest conclusions rather than try empathizing with the pixies around her. A better Spike would talk to snowflake fairies and try to understand them. In particular, Qana was just naturally quiet—couldn't any standoffish feeling be blamed on that instead?

So she reminded herself to smile gratefully and say "Thanks for all the help, Qana." The clearing they flew in had been decked out in as many ways as Spike could think of, which had included enlisting a snowflake-talent to hang beautiful snowflakes all along the sides of the trees. Icicles dripped from the overhanging branches and carried frost spheres of multicolored light, all courtesy of a team of helpful aurora pixies. Snow built up around the sides of the clearing to form a sort of bowl, with a single white carpet of flat ice leading to the center and thus to the frosted table Spike had built there. Icy goblets held single succulent berries, each dusted with subtle hints of powder from the tastiest woodbark that Winter had to offer. It was truly a work of art.

"My pleasure!" Qana's voice was soft and sweet, but there was a coldness to her eyes that made Spike feel suddenly uncomfortable. "It really is nice of you, doing so much work to help Gliss get ready for our date together."

Oh. Well. Spike became the newest owner of that universal feeling of suddenly learning you've forgotten to attend to something incredibly important, such as talking to Qana after Gliss had asked her out on that first day. Their ice polo game already felt such a long time ago, but if no one at all had thought to explain things to her in the meantime…

"You, uh… is that why you offered to make these snowflakes for me?" Her voice came out about as steadily as could be expected. In retrospect, Qana had volunteered suspiciously quickly when Spike had found those snowflake fairies…

"No, not really."

"Huh?"

Qana snuggled herself into a crack in a tree branch and watched Spike closely. "I'm not really expecting us to go out. It was sweet of her to ask, even if she was being impulsive, but… well, everybody's sure these days that the two of you are in love, and I wouldn't want to get in your way."

"Wait, everybody?"

"No, that was an exaggeration for rhetorical effect."

"Oh." Spike got the uneasy sensation she was talking to someone who was smarter than her—or at least someone who thought that she was—and didn't think she liked it very much. But then she couldn't deny that Qana had earned every bit of superiority, given how Spike and Gliss had been ignoring her. "So, um, why are you here, then?"

"Well, friendship! But also I guess I'm interested in why I was abandoned after I hit that glacier."

Riiiight. Ignoring her, in fact, to a rather dangerous extent. "Gliss told you that was my idea?"

"No, she said it was hers." Qana smiled with what looked like fondness. "She's a good friend! You're lucky to have her, or be about to have her, or whatever's going on."

"A good friend but a terrible liar?"

"Oh, she did just fine. But you can't lie to a snowflake pixie, you know! We spend all our lives crafting things to look perfectly unique, and you can't fly up to us and say one thing while meaning another and expect us not to notice."

"Um." Meeting Qana's eyes was getting increasingly difficult and Spike switched to staring at her latest work of art instead. The ice goblets, the frost table, and everything else were all very pretty, but they didn't give her anything to work with when dealing with a fairy that she'd wronged. Frost could protect warmth, but not if there wasn't any warmth for it to protect. And her wit wouldn't do any good against an all-natural lie detector, assuming Qana wasn't joking about that, and even if she was, well, lying to her would have been a horrible move anyway.

So that left… the truth. Sled had challenged her to be more open with her friends, and Spike had agreed, and Qana was about as good an excuse to try as she could possibly hope for. Spike cleared her throat and winced at Qana's renewed attention. "Look… Qana. You're right, okay? I've been absolutely awful." She meant to add 'to you' but decided at the last moment to leave it out. "Gliss wanted us to wait and see if you were okay, and I should have let her. I should have gone looking to find out if you were okay. I should have told you what's been going on. I should have considered any of this before blindly asking you to help me set up a date for me and Gliss."

"But you didn't?" Qana's face was impossible to read, and Spike gulped. Well, she had no way to go but forwards…

"Yeah. Honestly, Qana? I'm just not a very good fairy. I mean, I'm an amazing frost fairy! But I'm a lousy friend, and not just to you either, and I'm trying to get better but I know I'm not there yet." The words were coming slowly, bordered with stumbles and quick glances back to the ground, but she was amazed how good it felt to admit everything. Maybe this wasn't exactly what Sled had meant, but she felt better anyway. "So if you're looking for my excuse for leaving you at that glacier? I don't have one. I'm sorry I did it, really truly sorry. I'll do anything you want to make it up to you, but I can't justify what I did, besides just agreeing that it was terrible."

"So… you're asking for forgiveness?"

"I don't know if I deserve that much."

Qana laughed, but Spike was amazed and baffled to detect not the least bit of malice in her laughter. Her bafflement only increased a second later when Qana jumped off the tree and flew over to give her a midair hug. "That's too bad," she said as they spun around, "because I'm forgiving you anyway."

"…what?"

"Spike, Spike, Spike." Qana squeezed her close. "Come on, Spike, you don't think I like being all angry and disappointed like that, do you? Sure, waking up alone hurt, but I'd rather be your friend than your enemy! And it sounds like it's hurt you a lot more than it did me anyway."

"I didn't know we were friends." Although she supposed that wasn't quite true. Sled was forever dragging her and Gliss on various sporting adventures, after all, and with Periwinkle generally not interested they'd amassed a reasonably sized pool of fourth pixies for this or that activity, and Qana was in that pool. Mostly for tobogganing and skating and the like, though, since snowball fights were apparently too violent for her. Still, it wasn't like Spike did much talking with Qana specifically on such outings, since Qana was usually quiet and she was usually acerbic…

As if in testament to that last point, Qana looked hurt and sagged a little in their hug, and Spike cursed at herself. Seriously, what kind of idiot was she? Qana had forgiven her far more than she deserved, so right off the bat she turned around and said they weren't friends? Ugh! "Hey… hey, Qana!" she said, putting some more strength into their floating hug. "I didn't mean it like that, okay, I'm sorry, and—"

"No, no, it's all right." Qana still didn't look exactly happy, but at least she was pretending to smile, which… was an improvement? Maybe. "I know we don't talk much. I should probably work on that, because I would like to be your friend if I'm not. But I'm not really here to talk about me."

Carefully, after making sure Qana was still flapping her own wings and could support herself, Spike let her go and hovered backwards until she was resting against a tree. Snowflakes gleamed at the corners and she smiled slightly despite her overall confusion. "Okay, so what in Neverland are you here for? Because I'm hearing some incredibly mixed messages."

"You're right. I'm making a botch of this." Qana sighed. "Look, real talk, I was talking to Sled, and he said you were feeling unhappy with yourself. He didn't say much more than that, because, you know, privacy! But he was worried. So when you came looking for a snowflake fairy, I jumped in so I could see how you were doing… although then I got resentful when you kept not apologizing or really talking to me at all."

"Yeah. I don't think I've seen you, uh, resentful before. You're kind of scary!"

"I know! And I don't like it." Qana shivered. "But I guess that's sort of what I wanted to tell you? Nobody's perfect, Spike! I try to be kind and understanding, but sometimes I get spiteful. Apparently you've got some issues with yourself that are making you feel unhappy. Just don't be too hard on yourself, okay? You're not an awful fairy just for being flawed, and yes, it's good to be concerned, but you can't let it take over or you'll never get better at all."

"Oh." Spike frowned and thought this over. Was Qana seriously telling her not to be too worried that she was cruel and overly private and all the rest of it, without even knowing what her problems specifically were? She groaned. "Qana, if you knew what I'm dealing with right now—"

"Then I guess we'd be better friends!" Qana had apparently gotten closer to her again while she'd been thinking, and gave Spike a friendly pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure Sled told you this too, but there really are pixies who like you! Especially a certain white-haired frost fairy who thinks the world of you." She winked. "So if this is your big date, this is when you two fall madly in love and live happily ever after and all the rest of it, I dunno, try to think a bit better of yourself, okay? Confidence! Beauty! All the rest of it! Give your girl something to fall for."

Such enthusiasm was unusual for Qana—either that or Spike just didn't know her nearly as well as she'd thought—but it was certainly infectious, and Spike found herself actually smiling, at least until yet another worry made its way into her brain. "But what if I'm wrong and this isn't and we don't?"

"Then I guess I'll get Gliss for myself after all." She winked. "Kidding! Have some faith, Spike; you've got this. I'm not standing between you."

Spike brightened as a thought struck her. "Wait, so how do you feel about Periwinkle? Because she's single too and apparently it's starting to chafe on her. And I've got a book about dating I could give you."

"Hmm. Peri? Eh. Maybe if she asks me? I'm not really in a hurry about this sort of thing." She looked around them, taking in the snowflakes and the aurora spheres and the ice carpet and all the rest of it. "But I think I should be hurrying now, so you and Gliss can have some proper private time. Good luck, Spike. Remember not to beat on yourself too badly."

"Sure. Hey, Qana?"

Qana had started to fly away, but she turned around and very carefully stopped herself instead of flying backwards into another large solid object. "Yes?"

"I think I really would like to be your friend."

A smile, wide and earnest and just a little bit surprised, filled Qana's face. "Wonderful!" And then she was off.


	9. Chapter 9

The clock was a clumsy invention, born from their frantic lives and endless surety that they were doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if only they knew how many minutes it would take before the sun set, everything would work itself out. The fact that the lengths of days varied all across the seasons and the time of the sunset varied with them stood as monuments to the clumsies' foolishness, but somehow they never seemed to take the hint. Pixies, whose lives revolved around and were better in tune with the natural cycles of the world, had never seen a use for such ridiculous contraptions.

All that said, however, Spike was really beginning to wish that she could have told Gliss a little more clearly when to arrive.

Waiting in the clearing by herself, beautiful as it was, just gave her more time to lie in the snow and frown and think about pointless things like clumsy foolishness. Only then she'd realize she'd been dwelling too long on such thoughts and worry that she was being too negative again. And after that she'd remember that Qana had said not to be too hard on herself. And then she'd throw up her hands and groan about the lack of objective standard for how hard on herself would be appropriate, because if she was never hard on herself at all, nothing about her would ever change, so there clearly had to be some middle ground only no one had ever thought to define it for her.

Eventually she'd realize that the key to change was probably spending time with her friends, but she couldn't go do that right away because she was waiting for Gliss. Next she'd take some time to think about great Gliss was and how much better she was than Spike, but then she'd remember Qana's advice again. Then she'd decide that Gliss would be a great person to help her out, only she didn't seem to be anywhere nearby. So she'd spend some time wondering where Gliss was and how much longer before she'd show up, and from there, she'd start thinking about clocks…

Viewing herself from the outside, Spike would have called her stewing thoughts circular at best and pointless at worst, but they were there in part to keep her from asking another question, because that one she didn't have any answer for. If she really was so messed up, Qana's assurances of nonuniqueness notwithstanding, then even if Gliss would accept her, wouldn't it be terribly irresponsible and unloyal of her to present herself to Gliss in such a state? Surely Gliss deserved somebody better than Spike. Qana seemed smart and nice enough, at least when she wasn't being resentful, and only Lord Milori knew how many other fairies there were out there in the Woods, every one of them potentially perfect for Gliss if only she thought to ask them and find out. And that without even taking the warm fairies into account! What could Spike possibly have or do to make herself good enough for Gliss?

"Hi Spike!"

Spike sat up immediately. "Gliss, I've never been happier to see you in my life." And she meant it.

"Awww!" Gliss, for better or worse, appeared completely oblivious to the inner turmoil she'd just banished. She was wearing her usual sort of outfit beneath her usual hairstyle, wings no shinier than normal, but something about the comparatively long time Spike had spent talking to other pixies instead made her look that much more beautiful. "Stop it, I'll blush. Whoa, Spike, have you seen this place?! It's amazing!"

Instinct and caution warred against each other in Spike's brain. She wanted to say something sarcastic, but worried that would just be cruel, and she was trying to be better than that. But she remembered that Gliss liked her sarcasm. So, "No, I kept my eyes closed while I made it."

"You made—?" Gliss was off in the air like a hurricane, pausing over each snowflake and aurora sphere and everything else just long enough to coo over it before her wings and excitement flew her elsewhere. Icicle, table, snow and ice, no detail was too subtle to draw her attention and delight, and Spike's head rushed with pride as she watched from the ground. At last she descended, face glowing that much more than usual. "Oh, Spike, this is so beautiful!" she said, and Spike felt herself bend into a smile.

"All for you, of course."

"Me? Golly! So what are we doing here, anyway? You were kind of vague, except you did promise that neither of us would get killed at all this time."

"Well, I thought our third date had to be special! Golf and the like are okay, but they're still pretty similar to stuff you've done before. So I decided we should have a proper romantic dinner." She glanced over at the powdered berries in their sparkling cups. "Or supper or something. I'm not a kitchen-talent."

"It looks awesome! But, um, Spikey? A romantic dinner? Are you sure you're okay with this?"

There was a lot of Spike could have said to that… in the way Gliss probably meant, she had decided she was okay, but there were a lot of other ways she wasn't so sure, only she didn't want to burden wonderfully cheerful Gliss with any of them. So she brushed it off. "Me? Come on, Gliss, when have you known me to be unsure about something?"

"Oh, all the time." Gliss hopped onto the table and crossed her legs cutely. "You never say or do a thing without worrying about it first and afterwards too! It's adorable."

"Yeah? What am I worried about right now, then?"

"Hmm… I think you're worried that I'll be able to know the things you're really worried about really deep down and I'll say them out loud. But I only went for your surface worries!" She clapped her hands together. "Aren't I a good friend?"

Spike blinked, hard. "You're amazing." Being analyzed by Sled or Qana or even Iridessa was one thing, since they all had the decency to sound tentative and apologize as they went along. But Gliss was nothing like that. Gliss simply understood Spike without needing to be asked, to the point that Spike had to actively work to shut some of her thoughts away. And no matter what she said, Gliss made it sound like it wasn't a big deal. How was Spike supposed to respond to that?

"So… do you want to get started?"

"Sure!" But there was worry in Gliss's eyes, even if it was so buried behind the excitement that only Spike could have noticed it there.

It turned out that the berries really were delicious, at least once they'd figured out how to eat them. The goblets were more ornamental than useful, but the table was big enough to hold both berries on its surface alone, and from there they could tear off pieces and chew them contentedly, and the ambient cold worked to keep the juice from exploding all over their clothes.

The auroras' light gave the whole clearing an ethereal quality. Gliss's winged inspections had stirred up just enough of a breeze to make the spheres rotate slowly under their branches, and the light spun and twisted along with them, bathing Gliss's face in one unearthly color after another as she chewed and chattered and giggled, and Spike was enraptured. Somewhere along the way she'd given herself permission to fall for Gliss, and it was almost frighteningly easy. Every aspect of her friend that Spike usually counted when enumerating her more annoying qualities suddenly turned out to be lovable or at least endearing. She bathed in Gliss's laughter and only wanted more.

But making Gliss laugh was easy, so she joked and mocked and skewered and generally played the black-haired clown, and Gliss met her wit for wit, except she tinged her jokes with that added layer of optimism and good faith that Spike often lacked. By all rights it should have been the happiest and all-around best conversation Spike had enjoyed in a long while, but somehow every time she made Gliss laugh, that same hint of worry came back into her eyes a moment later.

So as they finished off their berries, Spike tried to divert the conversation in other directions. Gliss reassured her that Iridessa had been reunited with her coat, and Spike told her about Sled's large, meandering rabbit and Gliss thought it sounded adorable. They compared plans for frosting the mainland, or at least Gliss did, since Spike thought that sounded alarmingly like practicing. They made plans to really truly defect from Sled's snowball team one day and ambush him and see how he fought without a couple of girls at his back, and quickly assured each other that the betrayal would only be temporary.

This inevitably led to a miniature snowball fight drawn from the snow built up around the edges of the clearing, and soon they were laughing and flying up and down all around, dodging and weaving and tossing between and around the branches and the icicles and the hanging spheres of light. The Winter Woods were darkening around them as the sun descended, leaving the auroras to provide ever more and more of their light, and slowly their fight turned into a sort of aerial dance. No music played, but somehow Spike knew when to turn and when to dip and when to lift Gliss above her and twirl. They came together in one movement, arms around each other's waists and faces just barely apart, and Spike wanted to tell Gliss that she was beautiful, or fun, or everything Spike wanted.

But none of that was the loyal thing to say. "Gliss?" she asked instead. "Are you okay?"

"No."

Well, score one for awareness. "Tell me about it."

"Well, all right." She bit her lip for a moment. "Look, Spikey… the day I learned about acorns, I wanted to fly right over the crossing then and there and find one, remember? This was ages before Peri tried it and almost melted, so thank goodness you told me it was a terrible idea! But you didn't just tell me, because I wouldn't have listened! You sat on me. You went on and on and on about how silly I was being, even after I bit you and any sane fairy would have gone off and left me to it, and maybe an hour later I finally agreed. Remember that?"

Almost unconsciously Spike rubbed at the spot on her leg that Gliss had bitten that day. "Oh, vaguely."

"You're a kidder! But that was so you, Spike! When you really, really think I'm doing something wrong, you make sure I know it, and that's awesome because you're usually right."

"Usually?" asked Spike, drawing on her reserves of feigned injury, but Gliss ignored her.

"So… what gives, Spikey? After we got you out of that river, I told you I wanted you for my girlfriend. I mean, I didn't really tell you that, but you're smart and I know you understood! And I'd have expected you to work really hard at talking me out of it, but instead you went away for a while and now we're doing this? So I've been trying to figure out what you're up to. And I figure either you're just trying really hard to help me with my practice dates idea, even against your own interests—and if so, please stop! I don't want to hurt you!—or else you decided you like me too. And if so, um, I'd like to know about that, please?"

Gliss looked frightened, understandably so. None of that was the sort of conversation they tended to have, and Spike had trouble imagining what possible force could draw her to talk like that for so long. She really had no choice but to give her the truth. "The second one."

"The… wait, the second one? You mean you like me too, like, like like?"

"Like that, yeah. I know I dragged us into that whole thing with the Keeper, and I've been absolutely stubborn about this, but no matter how I look at it, you're really the best thing in my life, and—"

The glow around Gliss was so strong that Spike could have sworn the sun wasn't setting at all. "We should totally kiss!"

And because Spike couldn't think of anything clever to say to that, they kissed. Gliss's lips tasted of berry juice and were warm despite the twilight air, and her arms were around Spike and hugging her even tighter than her dress did, and their wings were buzzing erratically, and Gliss was tender and wonderful and everything Spike wanted. The kiss struck her with a high degree of probability as the single greatest moment in her life, and Spike reacted the only way she knew how to such a phenomenon.

She completely panicked.

Spike had known this would happen, known they'd wind up together and it would be amazing, right from the beginning. How couldn't she have? All the Winter Woods seemed to think they were perfect together, even Iridessa from the warm side. They complemented each other exactly, even if she'd done some of the engineering on that one. Their love had always been inevitable, and yet she'd fought against it at every turn, starting with that trip to the Keeper's and moving on from there with countless warnings and futile protests. Why? She must have known how good this would feel, but she'd fought it nonetheless.

And so, Spike realized with a horrifying sinking sensation, just as much as she'd known exactly what she was fighting, she must have had a reason to fight it at all. And because she was very clever, it must have been an excellent reason. She must have had a reason why she wasn't worthy of this, because certainly whatever that reason had been, it couldn't have been Gliss. For some reason—or else far, far too many different reasons—Spike didn't deserve her, and so Gliss deserved better than Spike, and so…

"Spike?" Their kiss had broken at some point, and some part of Spike's panic must have been visible on her face, for Gliss looked close to tears again at the sight of her. "Spike?" she was asking, "Spike, no, what's wrong? Please tell me what's going on, please…!"

Spike wanted to. She was supposed to be so talented at talking, after all! Unfortunately, like she'd told Sled, there was something she was even better at, even as her body began to turn around in Gliss's imploring embrace and she began cursing herself from a thousand different angles.

She was really good at running away.


	10. Chapter 10

Every pixie, sooner or later, tried to map his or her friends' personalities to their talents and argue that the one predicted the other. The direction of causation didn't matter much—although only personality had the option of changing over time, both began just moments after Arrival—but in either case, such arguments never lasted very long. For instance, there was no single description that would have fit Periwinkle, Gliss, and Spike save for 'frost fairy.'

Nonetheless, had Spike never met a glacier fairy before and yet been asked to describe one by guesswork, she would have come up with somebody very similar to Slush.

Glaciers were slow, steady, impenetrable things, and all the same could be said for Slush. He didn't move much, and he didn't say much, and it would have been easy to write him off as dull if it hadn't been for the curious feeling he gave of being profound. Spending time around him, Spike always had the sense Slush was on the verge of saying something truly original and insightful, and perhaps he never did, yet the sense that he would never quite vanished. Maybe all his deep thoughts got caught up in that silly cap of his.

All in all, Slush was a sparrow man without any obvious bad qualities, so long as you weren't looking for a lively conversationalist, but Spike had to admit she was more interested in his talent than his personality for the time being. Glaciers took up a surprising amount of the Winter Woods simply on account of their vast size, and their austere featurelessness offered Spike exactly what she needed: a place to hide.

"So I'm on the run," she finished explaining. "I need somewhere I can sit and think for a while, without running into Gliss or having her find me before I'm ready. Do your glaciers have a cave or a cubbyhole or something I can stay in?"

"Sure," said Slush, the first word he had spoken since she'd found him. "This way, man."

So off they'd flown, straight up a glacier's nearest face and along its top until they found—or rather, until she was brought to—a small fissure, which opened into a full cavern just below the glacier's surface and easily big enough for three Spikes to fit in. Spike had no idea how Slush had known about the place, which was barely visible from the outside and filled only a tiny fraction of the glacier's entire volume, but then she supposed that was just how glacier fairies worked.

"I don't know how long I'll be here," she said. "Is there any way you can bring me, well, food? I promise I'll pay you back somehow as soon as this is all over."

"Not a problem, man." Slush was magnificently agreeable.

"Great! And look, one more thing. Can you not tell any of our friends I'm here? Don't even tell them you've seen me."

For the first time Slush actually looked puzzled, like the world was more than an endless series of events he'd seen coming from a long way away. "Not even Gliss?"

"Especially not her. None of our friends. Is that okay, Slush?"

"Whoa." For quite a while longer he didn't say anything, and Spike was left to stare at him and hope that he really was thinking some deep thoughts in there and hadn't somehow fallen asleep with his eyes open and wings beating. But, "I can dig it," he said finally, after which Spike wasn't sure what else they could say, and thus she was left to sit in her glacier hideaway and think, ponder, and brood.

She spent a good hour or so simply berating herself for every possible offense she could think of, up to and including things she'd already been forgiven for. Not unlike condemning herself to Qana earlier, she actually felt a little better for doing so, but supposed that was because it meant she was being honest with herself instead of dodging the issues. Honesty was a good start. Honesty was commendable.

Less commendable, she was forced to admit, was running away from Gliss without saying anything. All her other sins felt suddenly minor next to that. For a moment she even made to exit the cavern and fly back, but she stopped herself; the damage was already done. Going back to Gliss immediately would be her worst possible course of action: she would incur all the anger or punishment for having disappeared, but without having used her time for any self-improvement at all. Rather, she would need to spend her time on the lam as productively as possible to counteract the added insult she was incurring by spending the time away from Gliss at all, while also being wary of diminishing returns.

So. Where to begin? The beginning was traditional, but she didn't think there was much to get out of their Arrivals. Spike was slightly older and had been present for Gliss's Arrival, waiting among the other frost fairies in hopes the new fairy would share their talent and join them, but they hadn't actually started talking for a few months more, not until their first trip to the Mainland to usher in Winter, where Gliss had managed to get separated from the rest of the group. Because she'd seen some pretty flowers and impulsively decided to go look at them without telling anyone, as she explained later.

Even in her first year Gliss had plenty of friends, and they formed a search party which Spike joined mostly for the sake of the experience. She didn't seriously expect to be the one to find the missing fairy, and was quite surprised when she did. Gliss didn't seem surprised at all. She welcomed Spike to the flower patch like an old friend and showed off her new discoveries with such enthusiasm it was like she ate pixie dust directly instead of having it sprinkled on her. The entire time they were on the Mainland, Gliss continued to find new places to explore and new experiments to conduct, and Spike found herself by Gliss's side in those as often as not, sharing in the excitement or else learning how to caution Gliss away from more dangerous pursuits.

That basic dynamic had continued ever since, with Gliss making more friends—Periwinkle, Sled, and others—as the seasons rolled on and Spike never quite knowing what would happen next but happy to let Gliss provide the momentum, with really only the one major incident. The Minister of Winter had been conducting some official inspection of the frost fairies and their readiness for the next Mainland trip, and she had greeted Spike with some confusion.

"Didn't I talk to you already?" she'd asked. "Gliss, wasn't it?"

Spike had only stared. "I'm not Gliss! I'm Spike!"

"Oh! My apologies. You two just look quite alike… really, you could be sisters!"

She couldn't remember much about the actual inspection after that. The very next day she'd started dyeing her hair black, and from there changing her clothes, her mannerisms, and so on, to be as distinct from Gliss as she could make herself, yet without trying to make the impression that being Gliss was itself a bad thing. But why, Spike wondered in the present, had that been her immediate and dramatic reaction? She was trying to make herself more friendly because she'd been convinced it was a better way to exist, not because someone else was unfriendly and yet she liked that fairy anyway…

By the time the Minister of Winter had confused them, she'd already been good friends with Gliss. Best friends in at least one direction, though Gliss had known plenty of other pixies at the time and Spike wouldn't have asked her to rate them. So why would the idea of resembling Gliss have been so abhorrent to her? Unless that hadn't been the real issue. She'd been bewildered, not angry, at the Minister's first words. And she couldn't have bristled at the idea that they were similar—why shouldn't close friends have things in common? And she'd wanted to be Gliss's close friend for sure. So the only conclusion was that she'd wanted to be Gliss's friend—but not her sister.

And there was only one possible reason for that, wasn't there? Having a sister was supposed to be a good thing! Periwinkle was certainly voicing no objections. But there was one thing you couldn't do with your sister, one option that younger Spike must have felt some deep need to leave open—you couldn't fall in love with her.

She took that idea to bed with her the first night.

On her second day she put that idea aside, not because she had any contrary evidence but because she simply didn't know what it meant. Instead she tried to construct an agenda for her time in the glacier. If she was going to come away from the experience a better fairy, she'd need to decide on and enact specific changes in herself, and that meant taking actions, and that meant prioritizing, and the idea that she might have been in love with Gliss for years—while fascinating—was not itself actionable.

On the other hand, when you were hiding in a glacier there were precious few things you could do right then and there. She could make plans, though, and spent the morning hours making plans for how to improve her friendships with Periwinkle and Sled and Slush. Perhaps the warm fairies too—granted they were visiting less frequently than they had in the first few days, but infrequent wasn't never, and maybe Spike could even undertake the crossing herself for reasons more personal than performing at the Four Seasons Festival. Flying into a world of warmth sounded nicely symbolic, plus she had certainly enjoyed Iridessa's company, even if Rosetta was too simpering.

That thought brought her to the subject of negativity. Qana had tried to help her there, but the ambiguity was still frustrating. Even Gliss didn't live a life without criticizing or disagreeing with anything at all, or else Spike would have had significantly more chances to sleep through the day without being exhorted to practice! For an hour or so she simply growled at everything and stewed over how unfair the world was that she had to deal with something so stupid, but finally gave that up as counterproductive. By the end of the day she had a preliminary policy that she could criticize specific actions, but should be wary of extrapolating from judgments of actions to judgments of the pixies who acted them. It was one thing to say Periwinkle was feeling lonely without her sister around; it was another to say she was inherently wistful and depressing. Something like that. But it took her a long time to get there, and she went to sleep angry at herself for the effort and how long it was taking her to get anything done.

She began her third day still angry, though specifically because she was there to think about Gliss and yet had wasted a whole day thinking about other pixies instead. Also, as she learned when looking into the glacier's reflective surface, her hair was turning white. This was because she was growing new white hair at her roots and hadn't dyed them in a few days, which only served as a reminder of how long she'd already been hiding, to say nothing of the fact she'd not yet made any sort of plan for when to leave.

If she was ever going to leave, though, she was going to need to really think about Gliss, no matter how painful it felt. She had a working hypothesis that she'd been in love with Gliss for a long time, but on some sort of unconscious level. She knew that Gliss wanted her for a girlfriend and had asked on two separate occasions, but she didn't know how far back that specific interest went. Certainly it'd been Gliss's idea to start dating someone, and also it'd been Gliss's idea to try some practice dates with Spike first. But Gliss had asked Qana out with Spike right there, and had even wanted to stay with her; it'd been Spike who'd insisted that they leave and talk to the Keeper instead. Although talking to the Keeper at all had been Gliss's idea, if only because Spike had been the one worried about girls dating girls. But Spike had been involved in the process, had organized two of their dates, had willingly agreed to Gliss's plans, had been the one to dissuade her from pursuing Qana…

…unless every one of her decisions had been a sham because she'd been pushed into them by the fairy who knew her better than anyone and could guess what she was thinking and predict what she would do. In an instant the bottom dropped out of Spike's chest and she needed to sit down before she fell. Shortly afterwards she needed to punch things, but fortunately the glacier was large and impenetrable and could take years if not centuries of punching before any harm would come to it.

It was the most twisted plan she could imagine, but it made such internal sense. Suppose that Gliss, in her unknowable patterns of spontaneous decision-making, had decided she wanted Spike for her girlfriend. She hadn't known whether Spike liked girls or even believed that was an option, so she'd found a source of authority she could be sure Spike would trust—a man who wrote books—and gotten him to say they were a cute couple. She'd arranged for them to go on dates, pretending they were for practice, but forcing Spike to think of her as a fairy that she could go on dates with at all. At every turn she'd given Spike the illusion of free will, despite knowing exactly how to manipulate her into making the right choices. And all along the way she'd put Spike into situations tailored to make her develop or nurture feelings for Gliss, like carrying Gliss home and putting her in bed, or asking out another fairy right in front of her to force her to feel jealous. She'd even contrived to take care of Spike for a while, by dropping her in an icy river right after making sure they had a fairy with them who could make fires. If Spike had wanted a fairy to fall in love with her, she couldn't have thought of a cleaner way to do it.

No. No! Spike could have screamed, though whether at herself or at Gliss or at the world she wasn't quite sure. She settled for curling into a ball and definitely not crying. No, that was the way a Spike would do things, not a Gliss! Gliss had specifically told her—unless that had been to throw her off the trail—that she didn't like to think far ahead. If Spike confronted Gliss with her theory, she'd just say she wasn't smart enough to think of something like that. And maybe that was true, but Gliss was perfectly clever in her own way, and even if not, well, they had friends! Qana would have needed to be in on the plan, given how helpful she'd been at every turn, and she was definitely smart enough to come up with such a plan. Sled might well have been involved too, and Iridessa, and maybe Periwinkle, and…

Slowly, as if afraid her legs and wings would join the conspiracy and betray her too at any moment, Spike moved toward the fissure opening and peeked her head out. Slush was nowhere in sight. She felt sick.

"Why?" She spoke the word as barely a whisper, even though there was no one around to hear her. "How? Why?" Why such a production? Why couldn't Gliss have just asked her? But she had, more than once… three times in all, if she counted Gliss telling her at the start of it all that she should get a girlfriend too. So maybe Spike had forced her into adopting the whole mad plan, and Spike's only argument against the theory was that Gliss wasn't smart enough to pull it off, and that was no good either, because she was saying that the fairy she loved was either a controlling mastermind or an idiot.

She spent the rest of the day in a sort of daze, barely able to muster the strength to feed herself when Slush dropped off her dinner. For maybe the first time in her life, she simply didn't want to think anymore. Hours crept by as she bounced back and forth between starting to think again and miserably shutting herself down. Not until the sun had set and she sat alone, staring up at the distant stars, did she dare to reconsider.

If Spike had wanted someone to fall in love with her, then Spike might have enacted such a plan. Maybe. She was mostly sure she'd have felt bad about it. But that was because she was Spike, who was working to deal with her innate cruelty and become a better fairy. Clever or not, could she really believe Gliss would ever do such a thing? Gliss was beautiful and energetic, sure, but she was also nice. Friendly. Loving. Attentive. Honest. Trustworthy. She cared about Spike like—well, not like a sister, since that wasn't exactly the point, but with a similar intensity.

So maybe she'd been looking at the question all wrong. It wasn't about whether Gliss was capable of doing such a thing, which maybe Spike would never be able to answer. It was about whether she would. Whether Spike could trust Gliss more than Spike trusted herself. And to that the answer was obvious. There was no way Gliss would ever attempt such a terrible plan, let alone carry it out, not because she wasn't intelligent enough but because she was too kind. If Spike trusted Gliss, she had to believe Gliss would never do such a thing. If Spike loved Gliss, she trusted Gliss. And she loved Gliss.

Just like that her worries seemed to float away like snowflakes on the wind. She trusted Gliss. Gliss trusted—had trusted, before she'd run away—her. Everything else was logistics. In the morning she'd get out of her stupid glacier hideout and find Gliss and make everything better again. She'd explain that she'd been an idiot again, and Gliss would nod and say that was totally normal, and they'd laugh and slowly things would get back to normal. No, better than normal. For the first time all day she felt truly happy, and settled down to sleep with a smile on her face.

On her fourth day she was woken by Slush, who said she had a visitor. Spike's eyes bugged out in sudden terror and she darted out of the fissure to confront him in the bright morning air.

"Slush, I told you not to tell any of our friends I was here!"

"And I told him we ain't exactly friends."

A chill ran down Spike's back to match the one in that voice, and she turned around and saw that familiar pink dress, that familiar brown hair, those familiar hands on hips…

"Hello sugarcane," said Rosetta. "I think it's past time you and me had a little talk."


	11. Chapter 11

Rosetta. Rosetta! Spike quickly thought back to everything she knew about the garden fairy. Snowball fight: screaming in terror. Tobogganing: screaming in terror. Skiing: useless and petulant. Snowshoeing: useless and petulant, shortly followed by screaming in terror. Romance: weak-kneed simpering. None of that squared in any way with the glare Rosetta was leveling her right there on the glacier. For a moment Spike entertained a mad wish that they might be on the other side of the crossing just so she could melt away and never have to deal with that glare again.

"Hi," Spike managed after an effort of exceeding difficulty. She felt proud of herself for getting that far and made sure to follow it up with as much eloquence as she could scavenge. "You, um, look angry."

"Sugar, we ain't good enough friends for me to be angry." And then she pulled a tiny mirror out of her coat and took to checking her hair in it, like Spike wasn't even worth her notice. Somehow this felt even worse. "But being a mama has taught me a lot about feeling disappointed."

Spike didn't have enough experience with the clumsies to recognize the word from that context, but it did sound like something Sled might have said at some point. "A mama? Like a… mother?" Not that that made any sense, because, well, pixies had Arrivals, not…

"Oh, I know, I know, I make it look good, don't I?" She gave Spike a lascivious wink from behind her little mirror. "My boy Crocky, well, he wasn't exactly a natural son, but after he im-per-inted on me, we learned to get along. And sometimes he visits, respectable boy that he is!"

"Crocky?"

"Hush! I'm reminiscing! Honestly, can't a girl get a word in edgewise around here?"

Spike raised a finger in protest, thought better of it, and bunched her hand into a fist instead. Rosetta was clearly crazy, but perhaps it wasn't too late to scare her off so Spike could go find Gliss and have important and necessary conversations instead of whatever this was. "Look," she said, "I'm glad we had this talk. My life is so much improved by the knowledge that fairies can be mothers! But if you'll excuse me, what I really need to do is fly off and talk to—"

"Gliss?"

"…yes."

"Hmmph." Rosetta's figure stiffened as she stood fully upright, radiating haughty disdain as visibly as the glow of pixie dust. Not even her frilly pink dress or its absurd white trim could dispel the feeling of terror she managed to instill in Spike's heart. "Honeybunch, Gliss has spent the last few days bawling her eyes out over you and thrown half her friends into a tizzy in the bargain. Everyone's been missing out on their beauty sleep keeping her company and looking for you! Now that I've found you, you are not getting off till I give you a piece of my mind."

"Oh yeah?!" Don't think about Gliss, don't think about Gliss crying, time for all that later, get through this conversation, get away from this garden fairy! She spread her wings out behind her like some sort of predator, but Rosetta didn't even flinch. "Well, excuse me for having my own problems! Do you think this has been easy for me either? Do you know anything about what it's like to have someone depend on you and want to go to them, want to do everything for them, but you have to go against everything you've ever known and believed and struggle every step of the way and not even know if it'll make a difference because maybe you're not good enough no matter how hard you try?!"

"Sure do."

The wind went out of Spike's sails in an instant and she collapsed to her knees without warning. The hard ice of the glacier stung through the impact, but she didn't seem to care. Every preconception she'd held about Rosetta was rapidly departing the glacier in search of comfier climes. "…really?"

"Painted peonies, that's why I came looking for you in the first place!" Rosetta's frigid demeanor was gone as quickly as it had arrived, and she wrapped a companionable arm around Spike's shoulder that Spike was certain she didn't deserve. There was warmth in Rosetta's voice but not exactly the most trustworthy sort of warmth. "Why, I reckon we've got just buckets in common, and that makes me the perfect gal to give you the kick in your behind to get things moving again between you and Gliss. Not that I know what she sees in you, but hey, everyone's got their weaknesses."

"But what did you do?"

"I am trying to tell you! You gotta understand, sugar oats, that I had things way worse than you. Everybody in the Winter Woods but you seems to think you and Gliss should get together! I had to go against eons of prejudice and churlish dismissal that us garden fairies would ever amount to anything, and the only gal that believed in me was a new Arrival I barely knew. But she didn't just believe in me, she needed me, and I started caring a lot less about looking good than making her happy!" She leaned in front of Spike to give her a wide smile that was about halfway between flattering and flirtatious. "So maybe there's something in your head keeping you from loving Gliss like she deserves, but if you dig down deep, I'll betcha you can break that streak."

Rosetta swished past in a whirl of pink cloth and flowery perfume, down into Spike's fissure hideout, where she spent the next several minutes flittering about and tutting and straightening the place up where Spike wouldn't have thought there was anything that could be straightened. As she worked she detailed—with numerous tangents, exclamations, and curious endearments, as well as instant reprimands whenever Spike dared venture a comment—her experiences at the Pixie Hollow Games, which Spike had written off as so much warm fairy fufurah. How she'd been so loathe to even try that she'd bungled her way into success, and that success had led into more successes, and one almost final, almost catastrophic failure… only to pull through at the last minute and succeed where almost no one had thought it even possible to succeed.

"Chloe, bless her heart, thought we could win." Rosetta smiled at the memory, a warm smile that didn't seem to be directed at Spike. "No idea why. But I believed in her, and, so… eventually I started believing in me too. If you ask me, this is your comeback moment right here, and we're going to give you any makeover you need to get you to win this thing and take home the girl."

Silence stretched on for several long seconds before Spike realized she was expected to talk again. "But I don't need a makeover!"

"This from the gal whose hair's growing in white at the roots."

"That's not what I meant and you know it. Look, Rosetta, I've been thinking while I've been shut up in here! I'm going to fly back to Gliss—I would be there right now if I wasn't talking to you—and I'm going to show her the time of her life and kiss her and live happily ever after."

Rosetta looked at her through half-lidded eyes. "Didn't you already try exactly that and then you chickened out?"

"Well…"

"So why should I believe you won't chicken out again?"

Spike looked down at the ice. When Rosetta—it didn't seem right to think of her as 'the garden fairy' anymore—put it that way, maybe she had a point. So she was in love with Gliss. Yay! So she wanted to spend more time with her friends and treat them better. Great! So she didn't think Gliss was an evil mastermind. Yippee! Maybe that had been refined a bit while she'd been in the glacier, but it'd all been true before she'd run away too. Sure, it was great trusting Gliss enough not to take complete control of her life and steal her every chance of making decisions, but that idea had come as a shock to her. It couldn't have been something she'd been worrying about since the very start!

Whatever had hit Spike in the heat of their kiss that had made her run away to begin with… she hadn't been thinking about that. She didn't know what it was. She had no way of knowing if it would happen again.

Tears grazed her eyes and she stared at Rosetta without any attempt to hide them. "Help me."

"I'll try." For that one fleeting moment there was no anger in Rosetta's words, no false modesty or constructed companionship or la-de-da girlishness or anything, only a simple honest statement by one fairy pledging to help another. It was enough to make Spike feel like they could win. "But," said Rosetta, her labored personality slipping back in with each syllable, "I don't actually know you too well. So maybe first off you could tell me who you think you are, and, oh, what it is you want."

Spike swallowed down an annoying lump that seemed to have found its way into her throat. "I'm smart," she said with less hesitation than was probably warranted. "I try to solve problems by thinking about them, and if someone tells me something I didn't know, I'll accept it and revise my judgments. I'm funny, but sometimes I'm too cruel, and I want to work on that. I'm lazy and unemotional and spineless and rotten. And I'm an artist." She bit back a smile at that last one—hadn't she been thinking of herself as an artist at the very start of this whole debacle? "I create beautiful worlds from frost, or, well, I can create them, but I don't like practicing as much as Gliss does. But I'm willing to change for her." She took in a deep breath. "I want to make our love the most beautiful artwork I've ever done. That's all."

"Aww, sugar." Rosetta's eyes were full and sad, and she patted her chest like it helped her contain her emotions. "That ain't art. Well okay, it is, but not any kind of art that's going to help you. Especially if you're the kind of artist who never actually produces anything."

"I produce plenty!" Spike could tell Rosetta didn't believe her, and maybe she didn't believe herself either, but she needed to defend herself. She couldn't go down without a fight. "Sure, a lot of it's just in my head, but it would look the same if I actually made it! It's not my fault that frost is forever melting when the sun comes out!"

"Mmm. See, love's an art, sure, but it's not the kind of art you make once and then forget about. It's the kind of art you do constantly, and it's the kind of art you do as a team, like me and my flowers! Gliss ain't one of your trees or rocks or whatever to put frost on, she's a real person, and if you want to treat her right, hey, you're gonna need to treat her right both together." Her face slipped from a sad smile into more of a smirk. "Take Sled… sure, I've got him wrapped around my little finger like a climbing vine, poor boy, but that don't mean he doesn't hold up his share of things."

The last of Spike's preconceptions—that Rosetta was weak and needed some serious help to stand up on her own and not follow Sled around like a lovelorn beetle—crumbled into powder, and with it went Spike's restraint. "But I don't know what to do!" she screamed, not at Rosetta but at herself, though that didn't stop Rosetta from jumping frightened into the air anyway. "Relationships are team efforts, yes, great, I'll keep that in mind! But I'm not in a relationship! How am I supposed to get in one, if the moment I kiss Gliss I think of something awful and have to run away again?!"

Rosetta had backed up against the wall, shrinking a little against Spike's miserable rage, and Spike tried to pull herself in a little at the sight. "How should I know?" asked Rosetta, somewhat weakly. "I still don't know what got into you when you kissed her last time!"

"I don't either!"

"Well, figure it out and then tell me." Rosetta came unglued from the wall, voice regaining some of its flinty edge from her initial appearance—which Spike supposed she deserved, after screaming like that—and started puttering around the little cave again.

Spike turned to a particularly reflective part of the cave walls and stared at herself, noticing the white from her roots seemed to have captured at least half of her hair already. Time was passing and she needed to figure out this one last question. She stood in absolute silence, ignoring Rosetta's little gasps and murmurs at what invisible troubles Spike had no idea, staring into the reflection and willing it to speak where she could not, slogging through memories and half-formed emotions and forgotten feelings, until finally—finally!—she recaptured the moment of her and Gliss there in the clearing and everything came together at last.

"I can't be in love with Gliss," she said, almost unconsciously making sure her words were just loud enough for Rosetta to hear. "That's impossible."

"Why, of all the—!" Rosetta stopped and Gliss listened to several seconds of careful breathing. "And why is that?"

"Because these dates didn't do anything!" Spike whirled around to face Rosetta, enjoying the feeling of her spiky hair whirling along a moment behind her and slashing against her cheeks when she restabilized. "Nothing! Maybe they helped me notice some feelings I always had, but that's all. So after we were spying on you and Sled and then Gliss came up with the idea of dating a fairy instead of a sparrow man? I was terrified, because I knew it would be me but it couldn't be me because I can't be in love with her, so I tried to talk her out of it. That didn't work. I even tried to keep her away from Qana because of my feelings for her, these stupid feelings that just won't go away, but whatever they are, they're not love!"

"And why is that."

"Because we've known each other practically forever!" Spike was really getting into it, stalking up and down the cave and shaking her fists at anything that she could imagine needed shaking at. "Forever! And if she likes girls, and I've liked her since I can't remember when… we could have done all of this years ago and been blissfully happy. But we didn't. So we don't. So I can't."

After that there was a very long silence wherein Spike slowly calmed herself down and Rosetta stared at her without giving away so much as a hint as to what she was thinking. Finally she blinked and asked, "That's why you high-tailed it?"

"Yes."

"Spike, that is the single worst reason for doing something I have ever heard in my entire life."

"But…!"

"Not another word. At least when my Crocky tramples my lovely flowers I can tell myself he doesn't know any better! But you want to throw away the person who makes you the happiest, just because you weren't clever enough to think of it yesterday instead of today?"

"Rosetta, I know I'm an awful idiot, but—"

"You're not an idiot!" Rosetta groaned. "Good gosh, it's like the only thing you like better than being full of yourself is hating yourself. Isn't half the point of being clever just getting more clever with time?"

"I guess so, but—"

"So maybe you didn't see what was right in front of you all along. Big deal! Gliss's helped you see it now, and you're that little bit cleverer than you were before and you can have a girlfriend for a bonus!"

"But all those years! We'll have wasted so many opportunities—"

"Oh, stuff it." Rosetta flipped her hair in as universal an expression of dismissal as could be imagined. "Fertile soil is fertile soil, honeyglaze. If I don't plant a flower today because it's too hot out, hey, I can still plant it tomorrow. But more important…" She strode over to Spike and stood fearlessly close, their noses almost touching, refusing to break eye contact. "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that all your life you've spent with Gliss was, I quote, wasted."

Wasted? Spike tried. Years of fun and laughter, of breaking boundaries and meeting new friends, of having adventures despite futile attempts not to, of late night conversations when everyone else was asleep, of practice and frost and snowballs and sports and trips to the mainland and Gliss… wasted? She shook her head. "It brought us closer together."

Rosetta nodded while looking immensely satisfied, though Spike had to admit she deserved it. "And when you first got those scary little romantic butterflies in your stomach, if you'd asked her out then and there—would that've worked?"

"Maybe?" Spike shifted uneasily. "I mean, she hadn't thought about girls then. But… even if she'd said yes, we wouldn't have been as close. Maybe it wouldn't have lasted as long."

"And are you ready to ask her now? No more chickening out?"

"Yes!"

"Well, we'll see about that one." Rosetta turned on her heel with a matronly grin. "You stay put for now, buttercake. I've got to smooth some things over for you before you get back, so unless you don't trust me…?"

Spike stared. Trust? The Rosetta who'd arrived at the glacier was not the Rosetta she'd thought she'd known, and had maybe cycled through several other Rosettas since then, but they'd all centered around an immense inner strength and a refusal to let other people screw up the world she wanted to live in, expressed any number of ways depending on what was appropriate. Maybe she saw Spike as just another stubborn plant in need of a little help blossoming? Spike, being a winter fairy, probably wasn't the best fairy to guess at that sort of thing. "I trust you to be utterly terrifying," she said.

Rosetta beamed at her. "Thank you!"

Away she flew, leaving Spike still dealing with some questions yet armed with a new confidence that everything was going to be okay. She was still young. Sure, maybe the optimal time to fall for Gliss had happened last year, or wouldn't happen for a few more months, or anywhere in-between. But it hadn't been the day they'd been confused by the Minister of Winter, and there was no use in worrying about the details now, not when the years of happiness they were definitely going to have together would far outweigh any not-quite-rightness about the starting timing. Unless Spike did something monumentally stupid—again—they were guaranteed love and companionship for a long time to come. She loved Gliss, and the past wasn't important anymore, and that was all she needed to know.

All in all, her renewed confidence made her all the more dismayed three days later, when Slush met her with the news that Gliss had agreed to go on a date with some other fairy.


	12. Chapter 12

"This is a terrible idea."

"What? No it isn't."

"But you said this was how all your problems got started!"

Spike shot Periwinkle an exasperated glare. She'd enlisted Periwinkle to help her find Gliss, but Periwinkle had insisted on staying with her even after the actual finding part was done, and so they were crouched behind a minor snowbank and being rather less quiet than a proper spying mission demanded. A little way in front of them Gliss was resting on a low tree branch, having her wings scrubbed by a warm fairy whose own wings had been frosted to keep them safe without the protection of a thick coat. But Periwinkle was making it difficult to focus on that.

"Exactly," said Spike. "Gliss doesn't think spying is an invasion of privacy, and she'll appreciate the symbolism of my calling back to the very beginning of this misadventure."

"I'm not sure symbolism is what she's looking for."

"It'll do until I can find something better. Can we please just be quiet and watch what she's up to?"

"Of course! Why's your hair white, though?"

"Dye."

"You dyed your hair white?"

Spike groaned. There hadn't been time to turn her hair black again after Slush's last visit, or rather, she'd had no idea if there'd been time and hadn't wanted to risk it. She was frightened and white-headed and, she realized, probably in need of some wing scrubbing herself. She'd been sitting in that glacier for a long time without it ever coming up. At least Slush had brought her enough dust with her meals that she could still fly, even if she didn't exactly look her best doing so.

Gliss did look her best, though, or if she had better ways of looking then Spike wasn't sure she was ready for them. Her wings glistened beneath the warm fairy's ministrations—a water-talent, Spike guessed by her dress color—and were spread just wide enough to give Spike a welcome look at her back and neck. Her shoulders were bare to the elements and shone like tiny silver peaches, and Spike wanted to hold them while she whispered sweet nothings—or some more sarcastic equivalents—into her lover's ears. Spike wanted many things.

But what did Gliss want?

The thing was, Gliss looked happy. Sure, Spike was only seeing her from behind, but she looked perfectly relaxed, especially given how much more frenetic her movements usually were. Some of that certainly arose from the wing scrubbing, a naturally pleasant process, but she still got the impression that Gliss was enjoying herself with the water fairy. Slush had been less than forthcoming with details, but clearly one of them had asked the other one on a date, and there they were, taking physical liberties with each other and seeming perfectly content while doing so. Spike wouldn't have been surprised if the warm fairy's wings had been frosted by Gliss herself, and she'd then offered to scrub Gliss's in exchange. Gliss had finally found someone whom she could feel content and loved with, without any of Spike's ridiculous emotional baggage to deal with all the time.

Periwinkle's hand found its way to her shoulder, and Spike realized she was shaking; she made no effort to resist, and so Periwinkle's hand stayed where it was. Was this it, then? All her endless soul-searching and recrimination and deliberation, but she'd waited too long and it was all for nothing? Maybe it'd already been too late before she'd met with Rosetta, and Rosetta had never come back simply to spare her feelings. Yes, the story had come to the conclusion Gliss had always thought it would. She'd gone on a few practice dates with an old friend, just to get the hang of it, and then she'd gone and found true love and that was all. No more need for the old friend, who'd made a royal mess of everything anyway. Spike would fly sadly away and reorient herself toward her other friendships with Periwinkle and the rest, and maybe in time she'd be improved enough for Gliss to talk to her again, and…

Spike sighed. Even in defeat she was still looking for ways to get Gliss back. No, Gliss was making her wishes perfectly clear—even at that moment, Gliss spun around on the branch to face the water fairy with a smile brilliant enough to be seen for miles. They clasped each other's hands, and Spike suddenly felt very sure she should stop watching. This was taking invasions of privacy to a new level, and she stayed only for that selfish part of her that still wished she could be the one holding Gliss's hands, scrubbing her wings, telling her jokes, making her happy…

Slowly, yet with an aura of inevitability, Gliss and her warm fairy drew closer. Even at that distance Spike could tell Gliss was chewing on her upper lip, which she knew perfectly well made her look that much cuter, and the water fairy could barely fail to notice. Their hands had come unglued to wrap around each other's waists, and there was a pounding sensation inside Spike's chest that she eventually recognized as her heart. Yes, because her heart had been doing such a great job of leading her around of late! It was time to stop being selfish, time to stop spying, time to stop loving, time to shake off Periwinkle's comforting hand and fly away and cry and make new friends and lead a better life and so much more, but…!

Gliss and the warm fairy drew closer still, their faces no more than a breath away, and Spike's heart took control of her body and wings and voice and shot her into the air above the concealing snowbank, and she shouted, "No!"

And Gliss and the warm fairy turned to face her, arms dropping away from one another, and Gliss smirked and said, "Gotcha."

Briefly Spike considered turning around to flee, but Periwinkle was behind her, arms crossed and her mouth set in a way that suggested she would tolerate no nonsense. Could she outfly Peri? She wasn't sure, and now seemed a spectacularly bad time to try to find out. And besides Gliss was flying up to her, and Spike knew that if even if she could physically outfly them all, if she ran away from Gliss a second time, she would have no business keeping on living. Nothing she could ever do could ever patch over such cruelty. So she stayed in place, terrified—and yet, she had to admit, also a little excited. Maybe it was time for one last Gliss Idea.

Gliss stopped about an arm's length away. "We've got a lot to talk about," she said, a little more slowly than usual.

"Yeah, I guess we do."

"But if you don't mind, there's one thing I'd like to do first."

"Uh, sure. What di—?"

Before she could finish asking her question, Spike found the world had been replaced by Gliss and Gliss was surrounding her and Gliss was kissing her and she was kissing Gliss and everything felt so much better just like that. Her wings beat unsteadily at first but she brought them into submission, forcing herself to flap at the same rate as Gliss did, so they rose and fell evenly in the air above the snow. Spike wrapped her arms around Gliss's back like she intended never to let her go, her fingers reveling at each touch of that icy-smooth skin, and her friend had never felt so fragile and yet also so strong. Gliss's lips had lost their berry taste from the clearing and now tasted like nothing more than just lips, and yet they were the most wonderful lips Spike had ever known. They held each other desperately, every breath an inconvenience useful only for giving them the air to kiss again, lips pressing together like every other part of their bodies, and it just felt so right.

Dimly she heard Periwinkle's voice from somewhere in front of her. "Hi, Silvermist! Do you want to want to go make some snow sculptures with me over by that tree?" Because of course she was Silvermist. Spike had already known that; she remembered the names of Periwinkle's sister and all of her friends, really, if she took the time to think about it, but she felt more aloof for pretending she didn't.

"Why? There's plenty of snow right here, isn't there?"

"I was thinking we should give these two some time to themselves."

"Oh! Oh, yes, of course. Sure!" Spike could hear two fairies flying away, and normally she would have said something sardonic and Gliss would have laughed and maybe swatted her playfully, but they were a little too busy kissing for any such nonsense. Mmmm! Gliss was the east wind and she had enveloped Spike like a blanket of warm air, lifting her up and incubating her as her egg fell away in pieces and she was reborn directly as a swan, and maybe she was mixing her metaphors but she didn't care anymore, not when her everything was full of wonderful Gliss.

But they couldn't hold it forever, and for all Gliss's smile as they pulled apart, Spike could still see worry in her eyebrows and the tilt of her head and in the slightly timid touch of her hand. Spike still had some shards of eggshell stuck to her, and those needed dealing with before they could live in any wintery castles or whatever.

"There!" said Gliss. "You still owed me that from last time, so I had to plan a way to get you back."

"Yeah, I guess I did. What was your plan?" Gliss loved her ideas, and giving her a chance to talk about one felt like a good way to start the conversation on a happy note.

"I mean it was maybe half mine and half Rosetta's, so I dunno." Spike must have looked surprised, for Gliss grinned at her. "I wanted to go see you right away, and I also really really didn't, though the first idea kinda won. But after Rosetta talked to you, she sounded worried that you might not show up, so we decided to put on this whole show to make you jealous so you'd come yell at me and I could calm you down with kisses!" Her face fell. "Or maybe I'd yell at you and you'd calm me down. Or maybe both."

Spike nodded slowly. Part of her had tensed up at the idea of Gliss having a plan, because it brought back that awful idea of their every step since spying on Sled and Rosetta as being planned out by Gliss expressly to get Spike to fall in love with her. But if the plan had only been to get Spike to come out of hiding—and she had to admit, it was quite clever—then she could rest easy. Well, on that one count. She shuddered. "Just to be clear," she said, "you're saying that whole thing with Silvermist…"

"Total sham, yep! We were all in on it, I mean, except for you obviously. Peri and Slush and so on. I didn't want to do it with anyone you knew too well, in case maybe you'd know something I didn't and catch on it was a fake, so I talked to Peri and Peri talked to Tinker Bell and Tink talked to her friends and in the end Silvermist volunteered to help me out!" She stopped, as if a thought had just occurred to her as relevant for the first time, and turned around to shout. "Hey, Sil, do you even actually like girls?!"

Silvermist and Periwinkle had flown far enough off to not be in the way, but they were still within hearing distance, and Silvermist turned to face them with what Spike guessed was a mysterious smile. "Cast your nets right," she shouted back, "and you never know how many fish you might find! That's water fairy humor."

"Huh." Gliss turned back to Spike, looked thoughtful for a couple seconds, and finally shrugged. "I have no idea if that's a yes!"

"Yeah, me neither. Guess it's a good time I interrupted when I did, or you two might really have gone to town."

"Yeeeeeeah about that." They hadn't really been embracing anymore, just hovering close to each other, but Gliss broke even that by darting backwards and glowering. "Just because I'm happy to see you doesn't mean I'm not furious with you, remember!"

"I never said you weren't!" The revelation that Gliss's attraction to Silvermist had been a sham had made redundant everything Spike had been thinking a few minutes earlier, and she hadn't had time to come to any new understanding of what was going on, but then maybe that was for the best. Emotions were spontaneous, and what Gliss needed just then was emotions, not a careful and rational consideration that ended up with Spike cowering in a glacier again. "Gliss," she continued, largely making her words up as she went along, "I'm sorry, truly I am! I'm willing to apologize for as long as I have to, or if there's anything else you want me to do, just name it and I'll do it! Without protest! I know I've treated you horribly, but…"

"I don't want you to do anything! Not like that, anyhow. You've been doing stuff for years and that's always been awesome. Spike, I need answers."

"Answers? I can give you answers!" She was aware her voice was speeding up, like she was determined to talk her way through each and every possible obstacle. "What do you want to know?"

Gliss shrugged. "Oh, various things! Like what do you think an acorn really is, like, way deep down? But that's not really relevant right now. Firstly I just want to know why you came back."

"Because I love you!"

"Uh uh. Not good enough." She drooped in midair, and Spike's heart wobbled unhappily. "Spikey, Spikey, I want to forgive you and kiss you a bunch and live happily ever after, you know that, right? That sounds fun. But right now you've made it so I can't trust you. Our last date was super sweet and you made me feel awfully special, but then you ran away and I felt just plain awful. Everyone kept trying to cheer me up and sometimes they would say mean stuff about you and I would yell at them and that wouldn't help any of us, and I kept on feeling like somehow I'd done something wrong, only I couldn't think what, because I must have done something really horrible to make Spike leave me like that." There were tears in her eyes, very fresh, and Spike knew that she was absolutely forbidden from brushing them away just then.

Gliss rallied and continued. "I've talked about you a lot lately, Spike. Lots of people seem to think you're terrible for disappearing like that, and I've had to convince them that you're secretly amazing and I love you and you'll come back and prove them all wrong. But Spike, I can't do all that again, okay? I just can't! I still love you a bunch, but you need to convince me you won't leave me again. Never again. If we date for a couple years and it doesn't work out and we talk and decide to break up, sure, that's okay, but if you just disappear like that…?" Her tears were falling so freely that Spike thought she must be getting strength from them somehow, for all they were having rather the opposite effect on Spike's own state. "So talk to me, Spikey. Please. Tell me I should still believe in you! Tell me why you came back and why I should trust you, because if I have to go through this again… I think I'll die."

Spike would die too, she was sure of it, but that wasn't enough. Her whole excursion in the glacier felt laughable now… well, and plenty of other words too, of which 'laughable' was about the most complimentary, but the point was it given her nothing to draw from in response to Gliss's anguish. All she'd done was decide to be nicer to her friends—which, again, she'd already been planning!—and give herself permission to be in love. How could she have thought that was sufficient? What had she been planning to say on her return? Hi, Gliss, guess what? I decided you are good enough for me after all! Please don't fall over yourself in your gratitude.

She closed her eyes and banished those thoughts forever. Forget the glacier, or at least, forget the stuff she'd been stewing over while she'd been in there. Forget Slush and Rosetta and Iridessa and whoever else had gotten pulled into their affairs lately. She needed to think about Gliss. Why should Gliss trust her, when she still couldn't convince herself that letting Gliss love her was even the moral thing to do?

But maybe Gliss had given her a clue. What she'd really asked was why Spike had come back. If there was an answer to be found, perhaps it was at that one moment of spontaneity when she'd refused to let Gliss kiss Silvermist. She had all but resolved to leave, and yet some deep impulse had stayed her and launched her into the air. What had that been?

"I want you," she said.

"Still not good enough, and also sorta objectifying. What happens when you stop wanting me?"

Spike nodded. It hadn't been a conclusion, or at least, she certainly hoped not. Could that really be it? Just more selfishness in the end, when it had taken her so far already? More jealousy, like she'd felt when Gliss had tried to ask out Qana? Intruding on what she'd thought was a perfectly happy date, just for her own sake? She'd known perfectly well that they were doing fine without her, and…

No, wait. Stop. She hadn't known! For one thing, that had been proven wrong.

She had never known with absolute certainty what Gliss felt or thought. The only one with even a chance—however remote a chance, she allowed herself to note—was Gliss herself. Because Gliss was real. Gliss wasn't some sculpture of frost that Spike had made herself with no input from anything else alive; she had thoughts and beliefs and ideas all her own, all of which Spike had no right to try to take away from her.

Spike could have opinions about whether Gliss deserved Spike, opinions which varied wildly with her moods. But so could Gliss. And Spike could argue against those opinions, if she felt like it, but they were ultimately Gliss's to maintain or to change. It was Gliss's choice to love Spike, worked out between her mind and her emotions, and by running away, Spike had tried to make that choice for her. By leaving her to kiss Silvermist, without ever learning her true feelings, she'd have been trying to make that choice for her again.

"I wanted to let you decide."

"Me?"

"You! Not Sled, not Qana, definitely not me." There was certainty in her voice at last, certainty that she had reached her final answer and if it wasn't good enough, well, at least she had tried her best and that was that. "I love you, Gliss. Actually, it turns out I have for a long time. But that means loving you, not some ideal version of you I carry around in my head that only thinks things I want it to think and only chooses things I want it to choose. Sometimes you have great ideas, and sometimes I have to sit on you, and that's fine. I came back because I wanted you to be able to choose whether you still wanted me. Because even if you like me better than I do, I love you, and that's why I have to accept that. Because love is the kind of art that you make together. Because no matter how much frost I build around myself to keep out the cold, it doesn't mean anything if I don't let you make me warm to begin with."

Gliss stared at her. There were still tears in her eyes, or at least the remnants of them, but her face was morphing into the kind of smile Spike would remember for the rest of her life. "You promise?"

Spike knew what she meant. "I've been thinking about myself a lot lately, but I promise never to stop thinking about you."

Then they were hugging again—not kissing, just buried in each other's necks, lost in some noisy place been tears and laughter and finally feeling warm and alive. Gliss was whispering, "I forgive you," and Spike was whispering, "I love you," and eventually she couldn't hear the difference.

At last they fell apart and Spike's heart leapt at the sight of Gliss, who floated there with all her old delighted confidence again, hands clutched together as her eyes roamed the world in a way Spike knew all too well. It was the look of a Gliss who had just had an idea.

Spike sighed melodramatically. "Okay, out with it."

"We should put a bucket of snow on Lord Milori's door so it falls on him!"

"What? No! No we shouldn't do that."

Gliss stuck out her tongue. "Sorry! I am your Girlfriend Whom You Have Recently Wronged, and I say we're going to put a bucket on his door."

"Oh boy. How long are you going to keep this one up?"

"Eh, until I come up with something dumb enough that you actually feel you need to stop me. We'll see."

Spike rolled her eyes. "And why should I believe that you'll listen to me then?"

"Silly!" Gliss darted over to kiss her quickly on the lips. "Because I love you!"

**the end**


End file.
